The Dubai International Film Festival (Diff) this year has been good for Emirati director Waleed Al Shehhi.
Two days after his upcoming project ‘Dolphins’ was announced as one of the recipients of the festival’s Dh200,000 Enjaaz fund, Al Shehhi on Saturday was chosen as the winner of the IWC Filmmaker Award, with a Dh367,000 cash prize. Al Shehhi beat three other filmmaker to impress the award’s jury, headed by none other than Hollywood star Cate Blanchett.
“It’s a big responsibility, but this will encourage all of us on the project to work harder and make a great film,” says the 35-year-old director who works as an Applied Media lecturer at Ras Al Khaimah’s Higher Colleges of Technology.
Set within a 24-hour period, Dolphins follows the lives of three main characters: An Emirati boy, his divorced mother and his father. The boy, who dreams of one day seeing dolphins swimming in the sea, sets off on an adventure with his friend, in turn triggering an unusual turn of events.
The story, written by Shehhi’s long time collaborator, the writer and poet Ahmad Salmeen, was initially meant to be a short film, the director explains.
“Ahmad wrote it about seven to eight years ago. I think the reason we never made it into a film was because perhaps we thought this could be a bigger film. We’ve changed it a lot since then, rewrote it a couple of times, before we sent it to the IWC Filmmaker Award.”
Shehhi, who has been actively participating in the Emirates Film Competition, now held in conjunction with the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, since 2006. He has more than eight short films under his belt. His film Ahmed Suliman won the Best Arab Documentary at the Jordan Short Film Festival in 2004 and Aushba’s Well (2004) took awards at the Muscat and Baghdad film Festivals. Other films, Water Guard (2007), Door (2008) and White Coloured Elephant (2012) were screened at the Diff.
He says he has 70 per cent of pre-production work completed and should be ready to film in a few months.
Ras Al Khaimah, his hometown, and the setting of most of his films, will form the backdrop of the story for Dolphins.
“Ahmad wrote it based on the location. I think the diversity of Ras Al Khaimah gives it another dimension visually,” says Al Shehhi, who says it was an honour meeting Blanchett on award night on Saturday.
“Someone posted on Twitter that they never thought they’d see my name and Cate Blanchett’s in the same line. I guess that sums it all up,” he says, smiling.
*Diff runs until December 14. For more, go to dubaifilmfest.com
