The Zayed University Middle East Film Festival (ZUMEFF) is a Middle East wide film festival for students. It shows the best films from universities across the region. ZUMEFF was established in 2010 as a senior project by AlYazyah Al Falasi and Reema Majed, with the goal of showing students’ films and supporting young filmmakers in the region.
ZUMEFF 2014 is the 5th edition of the festival. More than 1.000 students attended this year. Nearly 50 films were screened from the 125 submissions we received from 18 different countries.
One of the most interesting films in the festival is “Dates” by Fatma Alghanim, a student at Zayed University. Her film won the first place in the category of New York Film Academy / ZUMEFF Aspiring Filmmaker.
The film talks about an Emirati mother who left the only hobby she found herself in because of how busy she got with life/marriage and children. The film shows how the mother is passionate about doing everything by herself such as cooking and buying home needs. Her hobby is handicrafts. The film shows her skill of creating dates of ceramic and incenses. It shows also the process of creating them.
Fatma Alghanim took the tasks of directing, writing, editing, sounds, and camera. The actors are Um Mansoor, the mother, Ubo Hazem, the owner of a shop buying the materials needed for creating the dates, Sara Alghanim, a daughter of Um Mansoor.
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