As you know some well-known PHP frameworks have provide front-controller pattern and access control mechanism. Also there are some micro framework that provide front-controller pattern.
I have surveyed some such frameworks and yet could not make a decision, My concerns is:
I do not expect any thing more form my core framework, I will use pure PHP or I may use specific module from various frameworks.
Currently I have experience in ZF 1.x, ZF 2.x, Phalcon frameworks. And I also read Lithium docs, but I found no one suitable for my project.
Also as per this, this, this and this pages ZF, Symfony, CakePHP, FuelPHP are not efficient frameworks (fat frameworks).
Can you please suggest a suitable framework or a combination of moudules that satisfy such requirement?
Also see this related (but old) question.
In my opinion (because that's all that any answer could be here) the best, lightest weight framework is Kohana. It is very minimal and can integrate with whatever third party libraries you use (including ZF).
I always recommend the Yii framework. It has great performance - http://www.yiiframework.com/performance/