Dreams and dystopias, archeological records and the call of outer space. Science fiction, so often a precision vehicle for sociological exploration and self-analysis, here opens a complex conversation on life in the Middle East today, as told by its diverse residents. The news may offer bare facts, but sometimes it is more our imaginative or speculative forms of storytelling that can most directly capture and convey an experience. Turn a camera on oneself: film is identity. Turn a camera on the world: film is a direct window. Even when film provides a more meditated perspective -- through narrative, through artifice, through experiment -- it may not give up this immediacy and relevance. Instead, it opens up new ways of illuminating oneself and one's universe.
"pepsi, cola, water?" is a short experimental documentary about Sun Ra's legendary visit to Egypt in 1971. Jazz pioneer and philosopher Sun Ra had a deep fascination with outer space and ancient Egypt. Computer animation, archival footage, and music from Sun Ra are interwoven to create a recreation/
Remnants of the Hive is the story of a girl who is faced with the role of caregiver as her grandfather's memory deteriorates. By considering the parallels between the behaviors of bees and humans, this short narrative film explores the distinction between love and obligation, and the implications of
Five individuals, following different paths through the subtly dystopian net of the modern world, are united in the essential element of water and search for something even more essential.
The Pen of Mirrors tells the story of a mythical pen which grants whoever holds it the ability to write the immortal line engraved in the collective memory of humanity. The events are set in the future, 40 years after the last paper book was published where Qais goes off in search of the "pen of mir
A man working at the office late at night stumbles upon a time-travel power that can boost his productivity. But a power so life-changing is nothing to sneeze at.
Shot in the Sharjah desert, The Digger follows the everyday life of Sultan Zeib Khan, the Pakistani caretaker who has been guarding the ruins of a Neolithic necropolis for twenty years. A witness to the nation's founding mythologies, Sultan preserves archeological ruins, keeping them from falling in
Bioprinting will make nutritious, bone free food more accessible, but disposing of the bones or other food waste is part of our eating experience. These prototypes speculate on the alternative to bones or other food waste when food is artificially synthesized. The food waste takes the form of famili
Boum Mrayet lives in an universe where people wear glasses from birth. As an adult, he is hired in a firm specialised in writing the future so that it can always be controlled.
An engineer is haunted by traumatic memories that send eerie figures into his dreams, then waking life. An effectively creepy psychological study. Behzad (played by Nima Rad) is a civil engineer who gets very close to signing an important contract that can change his life... Writer/Producer/Director
After the discovery of the Ercevax vaccine, a scientist goes back in time in an attempt to save his son's life.
Hind's Dream is a story that reflects the history, modernity, and folklore of the Arab Gulf states. Hind is a bedouin girl who spends weeks alone in the tent as her husband hunts. In a tangled landscape of dream and reality, she recounts a strange dream about wandering alone in the desert, meeting a
A film about journey to find a deeper meaning of the unknown, "M1-K0" follows Mikolaj Zenliski, a Polish software engineer on his bicycle training in middle of the desert, who could be blasting off to the Red Planet after getting through to the next stage of the Mars One project.
Before there was L'Oreal, there was kohl. Kaltham and Dana met these ladies and filmed them as their senior project Producer: Alia Yunis Camera: Kaltham, Dana,Hajar, Noora, Haneen, Asma, Reem
Traveling through the seas among the playful fish and jelly fish, a man slowly realizes that his surroundings are changing into a darker and bleaker environment. Life is quickly seeping away and only one of his companions is left among the ruins. He desperately tries to save it, but all is in vain u
In a dehumanized world of dystopia, a girl trapped in a paper rebels against a totalitarian regime.
Courtesy of mec film In the Future They Ate From the Finest Porcelain resides in the cross-section between sci-fi, archaeology and politics. Combining live motion and CGI, the film explores the role of myth for history, fact and national identity. On the brink of the apocalypse, a narrative resistan
Under the imminent threat of Lebanon's 2015 garbage crisis, Hala, a wild child inside of a woman, is the only one to refuse evacuation, clinging to whatever remains of home. Mounia Akl is a director and writer from Lebanon based in New York with an MFA in Directing from Columbia. Apart from directin
With only a thin curtain between them, two families from different cultures share a room in a hospital. An unexpected friendship develops between the two young women, who realize they have more in common than they expected.
Anais, a young woman experiences what it is to deny one's self and overcomes her inner conflict with the help of a therapist.
In the near future, Factories filled the planet and intoxicated the Air, Humans started living in the deserted waste where Smog covers the skies and hides the Sun. Lithops, a 12 year old girl, lives an empty dull life in this deserted world with her older sister Miasma. Imprisoned behind her gas mas
A story of Ahmed, who like many, had no say in how his life unfolded, until he eventually decided otherwise, but death was the only language he spoke.
In 2030, the birth rate has decreased radically; there are 1024 children born per year. Every human, political, financial aspect has gone bad. A couple comes back home to change and go out for dinner. Anne tells her husband that she is pregnant but she doesn't want to keep the baby. Tarek, strongly
Being left unsupported, Dr. Sa'id 'Aram, a genius artist, is obliged to work in a salt mine with his six-year-old girl. The story begins when he receives statuettes from various festivals, displaying his creativity. Using a symbolic language, this artistic film tries to present new ideas to the audi
Saif, an unemployed Emirati going for an interview at a mystery job, is given several tests that will make or break him. Mohamed Al Hamadi is an emerging Emirati Filmmaker who, from a young age grew to have a passion for cinema. Mohamed has taken leadership roles in several short films which got acc
A man in the flea market (Mihran Tomasyan) walks while checking walls covered with old posters and counters full of stuff with prying eyes. Encountering an incarnating, he is carried away into another reality. Serdar Yilmaz (Izmit, 1973) graduated from Marmara University, Painting Department. (MA an