Under the patronage of H.E Noura bint Mohammed Al Kaabi, Minister of Culture and Youth, President of Zayed University, the 11th annual Zayed University Middle East Film Festival (ZUMEFF) has been scheduled to take place online between Nov 16th to 18th, 2021.

The event runs under the theme ‘Towards the next 50’ and for the very first-time accepted submissions internationally, ZUMEFF received over 2,207 films from student filmmakers all over the world, and 51 finalists.

Dr. Dwight Brooks, Dean of the College of Communication and Media Sciences, at Zayed University, said, "This year's ZUMEFF marks the UAE’s golden jubilee as the country marks the anniversary of its founding five decades, we will award the Pioneer Prize to the film that best honors the UAE leadership’s legacy of national development—past, present, and future. And the award-winning film will be screened as well,” he said.

ZUMEFF will announce the winning films in the three categories of fiction, animation and documentary. The first day of the event will feature some films which were ranked among the top 5 films in each category but were not given a specific award. On the following day, will feature the Honorable Mention films as well as a couple of workshops and general discussions on film making. The 3 first place winning films will be shown on Day 3 along with the twofour54 award and the Pioneers Prize. We also will screen an award-winning Haitian documentary, Madan Sara.

The event will present the Creative Lab’s “Emerging Filmmaker Award”, which is a ZUMEFF tradition to award this prize to a UAE National student by a major sponsor and supporter of ZUMEFF, twofour54.