Hiam Abbas began her career acting in Palestinian theater groups before taking film roles with directors such as Rashid Masharawi and Michel Khleifi. She is known for her roles in the films Satin Rouge, Paradise Now(2005), The Syrian Bride (2004), and Free Zone (2005).
Dahna Abourahme is a Palestinian filmmaker based in New York. She grew up in Abu Dhabi and Amman, and received her MA in media studies at the New School for Social Research in New York. She teaches video to youth and has been involved in several community art projects.
Tawfik Abu Wael was born in the Palestinian town of Um El-Fahim in Israel, in 1976. He graduated from Tel Aviv University, where he studied film directing, and worked in the film archive from 1996 to 1998. He taught drama at the Hassan Arafe School in Jaffa from 1997 to 1999.
Born in Nazareth in 1961, Abu-Assad studied and worked as an airplane engineer in The Netherlands for several years, before entering the world of cinema and television as a producer.
Mahmoud Al Massad, a filmmaker, was born in Jordan in 1969. He studied Film & Art at Yarmouk University in Jordan and then fled the country in 1988 to Romania, Italy, and Germany, where he studied and worked in the film industry.
Alia Arasoughly is a filmmaker, curator, film theorist and sociologist of culture, based in Ramallah. She grew up in Lebanon, lived in the United States and moved to Palestine after the Oslo Accords. She has lectured internationally on issues of post-colonialism, gender and national identity in the Arab film production
Omar Al-Qattan is a Palestinian-British director, producer and writer. Born in Beirut in 1964, he has worked in film since 1991. His film credits include, among others, Dreams and Silence (1991), a 52 minute documentary shot during the weeks preceding the Gulf War, portraying a Palestinian woman refugee in Jordan and her struggles with the religious and social constraints around her at a time of great tension and anguish. The film, one of the first to tackle the theme of political Islam, won the Joris Ivens Award.
Muhammed Al-Sawalmeh was born in Palestine in 1955. After graduating with a Masters Degree in Movie Directing. As a free lancer Al-Sawalmehwrote and directed several documentaries. From 1996-2002 he worked as head of the Documentary Film Department in Palestine.
Osama Al-Zain is a filmmaker and writer. He received his undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Jordan. After winning the Moris Sheer Award for short videos at The International Competition for Students Artist sponsored by Savannah College of Art and Design, he moved to the USA to pursue his graduate studies in film and video.
Sobhi al-Zobaidi is an independent Palestinian filmmaker, artist and scholar. He studied economics at Birzeit University and Cinema at NYU.
Kais Al-Zubaidi lives in Berlin and works as a director and editor. He has worked in film in both Europe and the Arab world.
Kamal Aljafari is an internationally recognized filmmaker whose work searches for home while also questioning the boundaries between “documentary” and “fiction.” Blending a potent mix of personal ethics, transnational politics, and video and film aesthetics, Aljafari reinvents the long take, the slow tracking shot through space, and widescreen mise-en scene-once keynotes of European art cinema-in films where time and place take precedence over story and character. Aljafari’s films represent a new kind of domestic ethnography-“home movies” in which his family members come to represent all who wait, survivors of a decimated nation, forever looking for what has vanished, confined to an ever eroding domestic orbit, in a war with no end in sight.
Saed Andoni was born in Bethlehem in 1972. For seven years, he worked as film editor for documentaries. In 2001 he gained an M.A. degree in documentary filmmaking from Goldsmith's College in London.
Suha Arraf was born in 1969 in the village of Mi’ilya to a Palestinian family. She obtained her BA degree in Philosophy and Literature at Haifa University (1990) and her Master’s degree in Anthropology at the University of Tel Aviv (1994).
Liana Badr was born in 1950 in Jerusalem to a nationalist family, and was raised in Jericho. She obtained a BA in philosophy and psychology from the Beirut Arab University. After the 1982 Palestinian exodus from Lebanon, she lived in Damascus, Tunis, Amman, and returned to Palestine in 1994.
Mohammad Bakri was born in the Palestinian village of Bi'ina in the Galilee in 1953. He attended elementary school in his hometown and received his secondary education in the nearby city of Acre. He studied acting and Arabic literature at Tel Aviv University in 1973 where he graduated two years later.
The instant Barakat learned Corrie had been crushed to death by an Israeli-driven Caterpillar bulldozer, he began work on his documentary Rachel: An American Conscience. This documentary, released in 2005, offers rare footage of Rachel talking to a camera and describing Israeli human rights violations against a Palestinian civilian population.
Hazim Bitar is a Palestinian-Jordanian producer, writer, and director. He founded the Amman Filmmakers Cooperative, which serves as the launching pad for some of Jordan's leading independent filmmakers. Since its founding, the Amman Filmmakers Cooperative has provided cinema education to hundreds of Jordanians and Palestinians, mainly in disadvantaged areas.
Born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1976 to Palestinian Jordanian immigrants, Cherien Dabis is an award-winning feature filmmaker who received her M.F.A. in film from Columbia University. Her writing and directorial debut, Amreeka (2009), world-premiered at the Sundance Film Festival (2009).
Rawan Damen is has been a TV Senior Producer and director at Al Jazeera since 2006. She received her MA in Communications Studies from Leeds University/UK, Dec. 2003. BA in Media and Sociology from Birzeit University/Palestine, June 2001.
Azza El-Hassan's work has been produced and shown by various international TVnetworks such as BBC, arte, YLE, ARD and many others. It has also been screened in film festivals and art venues around the world like, Yamamgata Documentary FilmFestival (Japan), International Film Festival IDFA (Holland), Lipzic (Germany)and many others.
Originally from Jaffa and El Ramleh, is a Canadian-Palestinian filmmaker. He was born in Kuwait in 1962. He received a BFA from Egypt's Cairo Institute of Cinema and an MFA in Film Production from Concordia University, Montreal/Canada.) He has made several documentaries and short fiction films preparing his first feature). El-Omari lives in Montreal.
Nada El-Yassir left the field of neurophysiology for cinema. Her work ranges from fiction to documentary to experimental. She presently lives in Nazareth.
Maryse Gargour was born in Jaffa. She has been a journalist and a producer at the Office de Radio Diffusion et de la Télévision Française in Beirut. She has worked at UNESCO in Paris, at the International Council for Cinema and Television, and has also been a freelance journalist for international television news services in Paris.
Qasim Hawl began as a filmmaker affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He began his filmmaking career in 1971. In addition to documentary work, Hawl was among the few Palestinian filmmakers of his generation who also worked in fiction filmmaking.
Nabila Irshaid was born in Osnabrueck, Germany. She studied art in Hamburg where she received her diploma in 1999. Since 1994 she has had various international exhibits of her video art and installations.
Annemarie Jacir has been working in independent film since 1994 and has written, directed and produced a number of films including A Post Oslo History (1998), The Satellite Shooters (2001) and Like Twenty Impossibles (2003). She has taught courses at Columbia, Bethlehem, and Birzeit University. She also works as a freelance editor and cinematographer. Salt of this Sea (2008) is her first feature film, and her second work to debut at Cannes Film Festival. Having been banned from returning to Palestine, she now lives in Amman, Jordan.
Originally from Ramallah, Jennifer Jajeh is a San Francisco-based actress, curator and independent filmmaker. A UCLA graduate, she received her actor's training at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in New York City. In addition to her work as a performer, she has worked internationally as an arts administrator in places as diverse as Prague and Palestine.
Hicham Kayed is a 2008 Joiner Fellow. A Palestinian living in Lebanon, he is the director of The Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts, organizations which work conducting writing and film workshops for Palestinian youth living in the refugee camps in Lebanon. He is the multimedia coordinator of AL-JANA, the Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts in Beirut.
Michel Khleifi was born in Nazareth in 1950. In 1970 he traveled to Belgium where he studied television and theatre directing. Considered the founder of modern Palestinian cinema, Khleifi produced and directed several full-length features and documentaries for international release and broadcast. His previous documentary feature, Fertile Memory (1980), was the first Palestinian film to be shown at the Cannes FF and was a groundbreaking work, both on a political and aesthetic level, treating the struggle for women's freedom and emancipation, across the generations and under occupation, in a haunting lyrical style that became all his own.
Born in 1942 in Palmilla, Chile to Palestinian parents, is a major Latin American director and screenwriter. Littin has had a long and distinguished career as a filmmaker and screenwriter in his home county and in Europe.
Rashid Masharawi was born and raised in Shati refugee camp, Gaza Strip. He is a self-taught filmmaker, beginning to work at eighteen in the cinema industry and acquiring skills on over twenty films before starting himself to write and direct his own. Masharawi’s films portray his knowledge of living under the Israeli Occupation in refugee camps, the new space of the intifada, as well as his constant reflection on cinema narrative.
Mai Masri (b. 1959) is a Palestinian filmmaker largely based in Lebanon. Masri received a degree in film production from San Francisco State University. She has directed and produced several award-winning films that have been broadcast and shown internationally.
Izidore Musallam is a director and most recently produced the Sci Fi Pictures original film: Savage Planet. He was born in Haifa and graduated with a BFA in film production from York University in Toronto, Canada where he now lives and works.
Hanna Musleh was born in 1954 in Beit Jala to Wahbe and Nijmeh Musleh. During his youth he attended the Mennonite School in Beit Jala, and later went to study in Leningrad State University in Russia for a degree in anthropology, finally obtaining his M.A. from the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology at Manchester University in England. Musleh then returned to Palestine and has worked as a professor at Bethlehem University since 1980 where he has taught cultural studies, history, anthropology and currently teaches film appreciation, anthropology of religion and philosophy.
Enas I. Muthaffar was born and raised in Jerusalem. She obtained a BA in film direction from the Higher Institute of Cinema in Cairo, Egypt, and an MA in Feature Film from Goldsmiths College, University of London
Writer/ Director Najwa Najjar received her BA in Political Science and Economics, and MA in Film and Video production from the US. She has worked in both documentary and fiction since 1999. She has reviewed books for acclaimed journals, and her articles on Palestinian cinema have been published in both local and international newspapers. She lives in Palestine.
Originally from Jerusalem, Rosalind Nashashibi was born in the UK of Irish and Palestinian parents. She has an MFA from Glasgow School of Art. Nashashibi is an experimental filmmaker working predominantly in 16mm film. She is the recipient of a number of awards and grants including the prestigious Beck's Futures Award.
Ali Nasser was born in Israel in the Galilee in a small village called Arraba, which is now the biggest village in the holy land. He studied drama in the Russian capital and went on to direct documentaries.
Born in Jerusalem, Akram Safadi is a Palestinian photographer living in Jerusalem. In the 80s, he worked as a news cameraman through the course of the first intifada for Reuters and AFP. After attending Birzeit University, he studied film in Italy. Today he also works in film, both experimental and documentary.
Abdel Salam Shehadeh is from Rafah in Gaza, Palestine. He has worked in television production and media and as a camera and sound technician, and has worked in various capacities for international news crews. Director of more than 15 Documentary films such as The Shadow, the Cane, and Debris which had a good impact in many international festivals.
Originally from Ramallah, Sherine Salama was born in Cairo and moved to Australia when she was three years old. In 1989, she worked as a freelance journalist in Cairo and from 1993 as an ABC reporter, receiving the United Nations Media Peace Prize for a report on the rape of Bosnian women.
Jacqueline Reem Salloum is a New York based artist and filmmaker. Drawing on her Palestinian and Syrian roots, her pop-infused work focuses on challenging the stereotypes of Arabs in the media. She has directed several shorts exploring this issue. Salloum’s work is also the basis of a youth education program on Palestine, and she frequently speaks at universities and conferences internationally.
Leila Sansour is the founder and CEO of Open Bethlehem. She was born in Moscow to a Palestinian father and a Russian mother and grew up in the occupied West Bank. Leila Sansour studied at the Sorbonne, Paris, at Moscow State University and at Warwick University in the UK. She holds a Masters degree in philosophy.
Born in Jerusalem, Larissa Sansour studied Fine Art in Copenhagen, London and New York. Her work is interdisciplinary, immersed in the current political dialogue and utilises video art, photography, experimental documentary, the book form and the internet.
Nadine Shamounki was born to Palestinian parents in Beirut, Lebanon and raised in Jordan, Europe and the USA. She acquired her two undergraduate degrees from The University of Maryland in Cultural Anthropology and Art Studio. She finished her M.A. at New School University in Media Studies.
Award-winning filmmaker and installation artist Nida Sinnokrot's unique style is very much informed by his past. Sinnokrot was part of the Whitney Independent Studio Program, the Made in Palestine exhibit and a number of group shows in the US and abroad. In 2002, he was awarded a Rockefeller Media Fellowship with which he went to Palestine to make a Horizontal Loop installation.
Born in 1960 in Nazareth, Elia Suleiman lived in New York from 1981 to 1993. While in the United States, he has directed his first two short films: Introduction to the End of an Argument and Hommage by Assassination, winning numerous awards.
Ghada Terawi was born in Beirut in 1972 to a couple of Palestinian refugees originally from Al Tireh near Jaffa. She lived in Beirut till the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Moved with her family to many countries, Syria, Cyprus, Egypt, to settle down in Tunisia for few years. Studied in the American University in Cairo where she got her BA degree in Political Science.
Nasri Zacharia is a co-founder of, and the Director of Programming for, the Harlem International Film Festival. He completed his Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from the University of California at Davis, and earned his MFA in directing and cinematography from New York University’s Graduate Film School.
Sameh Zoabi was born and raised in Iksal, a Palestinian village near the city of Nazareth in 1975. In 1998, Zoabi graduated from Tel Aviv University with a dual degree in Film Studies and English Literature.
