The Black Sheep film festival is named after an award-winning documentary feature film by SAE’s Senior Film Lecturer and documentary filmmaker, Reshel Shah Kapoor.
Film institute SAE Dubai hosted the fourth edition of its annual Black Sheep Film Festival on October,1 at the Dubai Knowledge Park Auditorium and Conference Centre, where creative students were honoured with awards across different categories.
Speaking about the festival, Yazan Al Ghazzawi, award-winning director, screenwriter and Head of Film at SAE Dubai, said: “Through SAE festival, students not only gain recognition for their individual and group works, but they also receive feedback from top industry professionals who have already excelled in their fields. The festival provides them exposure, encouragement and motivation to work exceptionally well and raise the standard of their productions much higher.
“We also encourage our students to submit the films to festivals around the world – acceptance into festivals contributes directly to student grades for the project. SAE is also in partnership with FILM-ED, the international student film festival and SAE students have made submissions there,” he added.
The big winner of the Black Sheep festival was the documentary The Loud Minority: Vandalye, directed by Elizaveta Zhokhova and produced by Yana Kalashnikova. The film won a total of six awards, including Best Film, Best Documentary, Best Director (Elizaveta Zhokova), Best Cinematography (Elizaveta Zhokova), Best Editing (Elizaveta Zhokova) and Best Original Score (Elizaveta Zhokova). The film was part of a series of three documentaries focused on the underground music scene in Dubai, created by the same group of students for their Capstone graduation project.
Home won Best Music Video while Raj Rao won Best Actor in Unscripted. This project also won Best Production & Costume Design. Lama Mahmalji won Best Actress for her role in Good Intentions, which also won Best Original Screenplay in Fiction. The Loud Minority: The Flipside won the Best Poster award.
Students from trimester 2 to 6 at the institute’s Bachelor of Film programme took part in the competition. Works were submitted in the categories of fiction, documentary and music videos. The Black Sheep film festival is named after the award-winning documentary feature film by SAE’s Senior Film Lecturer and documentary filmmaker, Reshel Shah Kapoor.
Submissions were judged by a panel of experts including SAE Dubai alumni JC Brigoli and Seth Wright, and SAE Jordan alumnus Iman Hassan.
