Lee Daniels, the Hollywood director and producer behind the films Monsters Ball, Precious and The Butler, endeared himself further to local audiences last night when he appeared on stage to present the Dubai International Film Festival Muhr features award in full Emirati dress. The category rewards the best in Arab cinema, with prizes for both features and shorts, fiction and non-fiction, while a separate Muhr Emirati section rewards the very best in local filmmaking. A new category, the Minister of the Interior award, gave US$100,000 (Dh367,000) to an Emirati project that missed out on the same funding as part of the IWC Filmmaker Award last week, Saeed Salmeen Al Murry's Going to Heaven.
Here are the top winners:
Best Non-Fiction Film
Nujoom Al Ghanem
Nearby Sky
Best Fiction Film
Khadija Al Salami
I Am Nojoom, Age 10 and Divorced
Jury Prize
Sahim Omar Kalifa
The Bad Hunter
Best Film
Hinde Boujemaa
... And Romeo Married Juleiette
Muhr Emirati
Jury Prize
Mohammed Swaidan
The Confession
Best Film
Aisha Al Zaabi
The Other Dimension
