Mayye Zayed's Blog: Fiction

"The Mice Room" is a collaborative digital feature film written, directed, shot and edited by 7 different filmmakers including myself and Ahmed Magdy, Hend Bakr, Mahmoud El Soghiar (Or Houda as he likes to call himself), Mohamad El Hadidi, Mohamed Zidan and Nermeen Salem, all coming from the Egyptian city Alexandria. We all attended together the one-year independent filmmaking workshop together in Jesuits Cultural Center in Alexandria in 2009/2010 where we played a different role in the crew of each others short films.

The film is divided into 7 segments or stories taking place in Alexandria, about 7 different characters connected together in a way or another. Each segment is named after its main character. The film's main theme is fear with all its types but also there are some sub-themes like loneliness, death and family. It is a very low budget independent digital film that's produced by "Rufy" for production including the 7 filmmakers and "Fig Leaf" Studio. All the filmmakers and the rest of the crew and cast are volunteering and not being paid.

It's still in progress as we've already finished scriptwriting and began shooting. It is shot using the canon 550D DSLR camera with different interchangeable lenses. One of the segments "Maha" has already been shot last August in different places like Cinnabon Cafe, Down Town Streets and Rufy's Fine Arts Center. Another segment "Hassan" is being shot these days in El Max which is a very famous fishermen district in Alexandria. The rest of the segments will be shot afterwords until February 2011. The film is supposed to be finished in August 2011.