FILMMAKER AND SPEAKER BIOS

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Samir Abdallah
Danish-Egyptian filmmaker Samir Abdallah has been producing independent and television documentaries since 1983. 

His Palestine-related films include: Une Faim de Siecle (2000); La Ballade des Sans Papiers (1996); Chronique du Dragon (1995); 1948, The Expulsion (1998); We Will Return Some Day (1999); Writers on the Borders: A Voyage in Palestine(s), an account of a solidarity trip made by members of the International Parliament of Writers to founder-member Mahmoud Darwish in Palestine when Israel would not permit Darwish to travel abroad to attend their conference; Diary of a Siege, Ramallah April 2002 (2002), filmed when Abdallah and other members of the International Solidarity Movement were trapped in Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah when it was besieged in April 2002; and Gaza On Air (2010), a montage of on-the-ground reporting by local journalists during Operation Cast Lead.

Specializing in immigration and urban culture, he founded the L'Yeux Ouverts (Eyes Open) association, a pun that suggests both open eyes and open spaces. L’Yeux Ouverts organizes workshops on film production and programming in the suburbs to develop reflection and practical usage for the public on representations of real and imaginary images.

Over the years, he has also formed the network he now calls CINEMETEQUE, with more than 3000 partnerships with groups in France, Europe, the Arab countries and the American continent who share the objective of making known the cinem

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Dahna Abourahme is a Palestinian filmmaker who grew up in Abu Dhabi and Amman. She received her MA in Media Studies at the New School for Social Research in New York, where she worked as a filmmaker and youth media educator. She currently lives in Beirut and teaches at the Lebanese American University. Her first feature documentary was Until When… (2004), a personal portrait of four Palestinian families living in Dheisheh refugee camp in the West Bank.

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Abdallah al-Ghoul grew up in the United Arab Emirates and Gaza. He studied filmmaking at the Higher Institute of Cinema in Cairo.

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Basma Alsharif is a Palestinian visual artist who works with moving and still image, sound, and language. She was born in 1983 in Kuwait, but grew up in the US and received an MFA from the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois, Chicago in 2007. Since then, she has been working in Cairo, Beirut, and Amman. Her work has been shown in exhibitions and film festivals internationally. She lives and works in Beirut, Lebanon.

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Nabil Ayouch, a Moroccan filmmaker, was born in Paris in 1969. Ayouch directed his first feature, Mektoub (1997), then Ali Zaoua (2000), A Minute of Sun Less (2003), and Whatever Lola Wants (2007). His films have won many prizes around the world. Mektoub and Ali Zaoua represented Morocco at the Oscars in 1998 and 2001. Ayouch regularly returns to live events, since he designs and directs the closing event of the World Economic Forum in Davos (Switzerland) and the opening of Temps du Maroc at the Château de Versailles. Over the last 10 years his company, Ali n' Productions, has discovered and produced many young talents. In 2011, Nabil Ayouch directed My Land, his first feature documentary. He is preparing his next feature film, Les étoiles de Sidi Moumen.  Awards: Music and Editing, National Festival of Film, Tangier, Morocco

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Gabriella Bier graduated from the documentary department at the University College of Film, Radio, Television and Theatre in Stockholm 1997. Prior to that she worked as a journalist for press and TV, with African culture and social issues as fields of interest. She studied Film, History of Philosophy and Science, and International Relations at the University of Stockholm. Her work focuses on cultural conflicts from a personal angle. Her documentaries have had cinematic release and been broadcasted on Swedish and Norwegian TV. She also teaches at the University College of Film, Radio, Television and Theatre.

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Francesco Cannito (Shooting Muhmmad) is an author and director of advertising spots and documentaries. He has contributed to many Italian television programs and his short film Regalo di compleanno won the Premio Cinecittà Digital 2002 in Rome and the Prize for Best Short Film at “Venezia Circuito Off” 2004 in Venice, Italy.

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Louise-Marie Colon 

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Rajie / Roger Cook, (b 1930) an internationally known graphic designer, photographer and artist. His graphic design and photography have been used by IBM, Container Corporation of America, Montgomery Ward, Squibb Corporation, Black & Decker, Volvo, Subaru, AT&T, New York Times, Bell Atlantic, BASF, Lenox, and a number of other major international corporations.

Cook is a graduate of the Pratt Institute and in 1997 was selected as Alumni of the year, and has also served on the Pratt Advisory Board. He has been a member of the American Institute of Graphic Arts.

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Guy Davidi is an Israeli documentary filmmaker and cinema teacher. Born in 1978 in Jaffa, he started directing, editing, and shooting films at age 16. Davidi directed several short films, notably In Working Progress, A Gift of Heaven, and Women Defying Barriers. His first full-length documentary was Interrupted Streams. Currently, he is co-directing and producing a new project, 5 Broken Cameras, with Palestinian director Emad Burnat. He also teaches video and cinema in workshops called “VideoAct.”

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Richard Dindo
Swiss filmmaker Richard Dindo is Switzerland’s best-known documentary filmmaker. Born in Zurich in 1944, Dindo, a self-taught filmmaker, has made more than 20 films, all but one of them documentaries. Nearly all are biographies: of artists, or revolutionaries, or both. Dindo’s films focus on authentic material and “the facts”: returning to the scene of historical events, collecting testimony from eyewitnesses, and examining documents from the period in question. His films have been shown all over the world, including retrospectives in Germany, France, the USA, Canada, and Argentina.

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Doi has produced numerous documentary programs for NHK and commercial television in Japan, including Fallujah, April 2004 (2005). His many books (all in Japanese) include Palestine: Occupation and the People; The Jews of America; Palestine and the “Peace Agreement”; Palestinian Voices, Israeli Voices; and Breaking the Silence: Former Israeli Soldiers Discuss Occupation.

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Dominique Dubosc
After getting his diploma in ethnography ad psychology in 1965, Dominique Dubosc started working as a photographer. He taught social anthropology, directed short films, taught the history of syndicalism, and was a television director. Since 1987, he has been teaching cinema at Middlebury College and Columbia University.

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Zeina Durra is a Palestinian-American writer/director based between New York City and London. Durra has a BA Hons in Middle East Studies from Oxford University and an MFA from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, Graduate Film Program. She graduated with the award-winning thesis film, The Seventh Dog. Imperialists is her first full-length feature film.

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Taghreed El-Azza, 29, is from Bethlehem. “For me, the camera means an eye on reality.”

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Johan Eriksson has worked as a reporter on foreign affairs for Finnish and Swedish TV, and covered news worldwide. He made more than 20 documentaries for Nordic and British Broadcasters and won several awards. Currently, he is making documentaries in the occupied Palestinian territories.

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Mohamed Fadel

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Daniel Gal is an Israeli cinematographer (Bnei Sahnin, directed by Suha Aref, 2005; To See If I Am Smiling, directed by Tamar Yarom, 2007, and The Promised Land [France 2, 2008]). He also filmed and directed Children’s Story for Jerusalem Moments 2008.

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Avi Goldstein studied photography at Princeton University and has Understudied with several accomplished documentary filmmakers. In 2009, he completes a Masters in Community Leadership & Philanthropy studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is active with a variety of art and social change initiatives. 

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Ahmad Habash, a Palestinian filmmaker and animator, was born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1976. He lived his childhood in diaspora, traveling from one country to another with his family. In 1997, he obtained his BA in Film Directing. In 2006, he directed and animated Flee, a short sand animation, as part of Palestine, Summer 2006. He was also awarded a full scholarship from the Said Foundation to obtain a Master’s degree in the UK. In September 2007, he graduated from Bournemouth University with a Master’s Degree in 3-D Computer Animation. In 2009, he produced Fatenah, the first Palestinian 3-D animated film.

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AWARDS

The Audre Lorde Writing Award, Hunter College (1995, 2000)
The Morris Center for Healing Poetry Award (1996)
New York Mills Artist Residency (1998)
Van Lier Fellowship (1999)
The 2001 Emerging Artist Award, Asian/Pacific/American Studies Institute at NYU
TONY Award – Special Theatrical Event – original cast member and writer for Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam on Broadway (2003)
Suheir is also a talent associate for the Peabody Award winning HBO show Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry (2003) 

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Omaima Hamouri
Born in 1988 in Jerusalem, Omaima Hamouri graduated from the Television and Media Department at Al-Quds University. She directed On the Ground (2009) and Jerusalem Wakes-up (2009), both produced through Shashat’s training/production programs.

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Delphine Hermans

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Inna Holmqvist

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Adel Iskandar is Adjunct Instructor of Communication, Culture, and Technology at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS), Georgetown University in Washington DC. He is the co-editor, with Hakem Rustom, of Edward Said: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation (University of California Press, 2010).

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Raneen Jeries is a coordinator of the Oral History project at Zochrot, an NGO in Israel that seeks to raise public awareness of the Palestinian Nakba, especially among Jews in Israel. Jeries is active in a number of organizations for social change, including al-Muntada, Arab Forum for Sexuality, Education, and Health in Haifa and currently lives in Haifa. She holds a BA and an MA in Social Work.

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Dara Khader is 21 years old and a student of Civil Engineering at An-Najah National University. She Directed Remote Control, part of the Confession film collection in a training/production program at Shashat, and Loneliness In the Darkness of the Day. The Decision is her third film.

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Laialy Kilani studies in Al-Najah National University, in the Faculty of Technology and Information. She works in Television. She directed "If u say yes or if u say no," part of the Confession film collection in a training / production program at Shashat, and Predestination in NUFF film festival in Norway. The Decision is her third film.

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Michael Krotkiewski, from Sweden, directed Civil Disobedience, which was shown on Swedish National Television and I dreamed about Pol Pot. He currently studies documentary filmmaking at the National Film School of Sweden, Dramatiska Institutet.

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Ibtisam Ma’araneh was born and raised in the Arab village of Fureidis in Israel. For the past 10 years, since founding Ibtisam Films, she has been creating documentary cinema that advances women and speaks to the relationships of women within Palestinian-Arab society in Israel. Among her award winning films is Three Times Divorced, chronicling a Gazan women who married a Palestinian citizen of Israel and fought for custody of her children after he divorced her in absentia. Mara’aneh’s most recent film is 77 Steps, a personal documentary, also featured at BPFF.

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Mahmoud Al Massad

Filmmaker Al Massad was born in Jordan in 1969. He studied Film & Art at Yarmouk University in Jordan and left the country in 1988. He went to Romania, Italy and Germany, where he studied and worked in the film industry. Since then, Al Massad has directed and produced more than 10 shorts films and documentaries and has worked for two Dutch TV broadcasting stations. In 1998 he returned to independent filmmaking and created Shatter Hassan, his renowned feature film. It has been warmly received by international critics, won several prices and was shown at the Film festival of Cannes.

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Khalil Muzayen is a Palestinian film maker with extensive experience in direction and film production. He is a graduate of FOJO Institute in Sweden (2009) and has worked for many news organizations. He is currently Director of the Palestinian Satellite Channel Palestine and teaches filmmaking at Al Azher and Birzeit University. 

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Suhel Nafar is a member of DAM, the first Palestinian hip hop crew. Yala to the Moon is his first short film.

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Nadine Naous was born in 1974 in Lebanon. After studies of cinema and Letters, she has worked as an assistant director, journalist, director, translator in fiction and in documentary, for the cinema and the Television. She is also an artist and an author of diverse installations that mix movies in super8, videos, photos, and sound narratives. In 2006, she made her first documentary, My Palestine. After an experiment as an actress in The Snake Woman by Marie Hélia in 2008, she produced her first short fiction film: Clichés. In 2010, she worked as scriptwriter with Hiam Abbass on the forthcoming feature film Inheritance.

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Murad Nassar
Born in Amman and currently living in Ramallah, Palestinian director Murad Nassar studied Cinema, Television, and Radio Direction at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Baghdad University. After graduating, he moved with his family to Ramallah. For four years, he has worked as a director and assistant director for Jordan Television.

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May Odeh was born in Birzeit, Palestine in 1981. She received her BA in Television and Radio Studies from Birzeit University. She worked as a correspondent for several Arab Television Channels including Al-Jazeera Children's Channel for several years. She worked on the production of many Palestinian feature films such as Laila's Birthday, Salt of This Sea, Rico in the Night, and Five Minutes from My Home. Diaries is her first full-length documentary. She is now working on another, Oslo, I Love You.

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Lillie Paquette is a specialist in international affairs with an MA in Global Studies from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where she focused on mass media, public opinion, and US foreign policy in the Middle East. Paquette has followed developments in Middle East-US relations since her first visit to Egypt in 2002 as part of a Fulbright funded “Dialogue of Civilizations” student exchange program. During 2010, Paquette worked in Cairo where she filmed We Are Egypt. While there, she also worked as a news reporter and producer for Reuters Video News.

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He has been working for years documenting the Gipsy community in Italy, then he moved to Beirut where he has shot several documentaries, even in war time. In Lebanon he coordinated a long term documentation project in the Palestinian refugee’s camps. His film “Gaza Hospital” has been awarded by the International Press with the Golden Globe as the best Italian documentary of 2010. As film camera focus puller he shot 17 feature length films for the cinema, and as camera operator and director of photography he realized almost 30 short length fiction films. He contributed to the cinematography of approximately 80 documentaries. Among others: Dancing Dump, Hair India, Sguardi superstiti

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Anna Person

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Tariq Rimawi is a Jordanian animation filmmaker. He holds a BA in Graphic Design from Petra University, Jordan and an MA in Animation from the International Film School of Wales, UK. He made Missing by using stop-motion animation techniques.

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Vanessa Rousselot studied the history of the Arab World at the Sorbonne, then classical Arabic at l’Université des Langues Orientales, before moving towards documentary filmmaking. After filming interviews in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, she assisted filmmaker Pierre Barougier on his documentary Les Maux Savants. Then, she directed several television reports. She was confirmed as an actress and a playwright. She developed (No) Laughing Matter by weaving together her comedy experience, command of Arabic, and strong knowledge of the Middle East.

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Mehdi Saleki was born in Tehran, Iran in 1955. He moved to Sweden in 1988 and studied filmmaking. He is an independent Swedish filmmaker who has made more than 30 documentaries and short films since 1990. In 1998, he co-founded Owner & President of REC VIEW Film production. 

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Jacqueline Reem Salloum, originally from Beit Jala in the West Bank, is a New York-based artist and filmmaker who directed Slingshot Hip Hop (2008). Drawing on her Palestinian and Syrian roots, Salloum’s pop-infused work focuses on challenging the stereotypes of Arabs in the media. She has directed several shorts exploring this issue, including Planet of the Arabs. Salloum holds an MFA from New York University.

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Maher Abi Samra was born in Beirut in 1965. He studied Drama Arts at the Lebanese University in Beirut and Audio-Visual Studies at the Institut National de l’Image et du Son, in Paris, and has worked as a photo-journalist for Lebanese dailies and international agencies. He has directed several feature-length documentaries including Chatila Roundabout (2004), Women of Hezbollah (2000), and Chronicles of Return (1995). His short films include Merely a Smell (2007), Mariam (2006), My Friend (2003), and Building on the Waves (1996).

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Elia Suleiman, a Palestinian film director and actor, was born in Nazareth. From 1982 to 1993, Suleiman lived in New York City, where he directed two short films: Introduction to the End of an Argument and Homage by Assassination, which won numerous awards. In 1996, Suleiman directed Chronicle of a Disappearance, his first feature film. In 2002, Suleiman’s second feature film, Divine Intervention, won the Jury Prize at the Festival de Cannes and the International Critics (FIPRESCI) Prize, as well as the Best Foreign Film Prize at the European Awards in Rome. Other films include The Time That Remains (2009), To Each His Own Cinema (2007), Cyber Palestine (1999), and The Gulf War: What Next? (1993).His latest project, in post production, 7 Days in La Habana was co-directed with Laurent Cantent, Benicio Del Toro, Julio Medem, Gaspar Noé plus others.

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Paul Smaczny
Producer, director and screenwriter Paul Smaczny studied law, French and German literature, film, and theatre in Germany and Paris. He has produced or directed more than 150 films and television programs throughout the world, capturing some of the most important musical events of the last 15 years, featuring such renowned orchestras and opera houses as the Berliner Philharmoniker, Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Staatsoper Berlin or La Scala in Milan. Since 2001, he has been the Managing Director of EuroArts Music International.

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Andrew Telling is a filmmaker, composer, and sound engineer who lives in the United Kingdom.

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Eti Tsicko was born and raised in the south of Israel, in Ashkelon. Her parents immigrated to Israel from Georgia in 1974. After high-school she did her national service working with children. She is now studying film at Tel Aviv University. She is also one of the lectors of this year's Rehovot women's international film festival. 

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Waleed Zaiter is a freelance animator and artist living in New York City. He has served as Producer/Editor Visual Effects Supervisor on Slingshot Hip Hop, Animator/Editor for Made in 2010; Animator for music videos by The Narcicyst, DAM, and others, and many other projects. 

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Sameh Zoabi was born in 1975 and raised in Iksal, a Palestinian village near the city of Nazareth, Israel. He has a BA in Film Studies and English Literature from Tel Aviv University and an MFA in Film Direction from Columbia’s School of the Arts. Zoabi’s previous short film Be Quiet won Third Prize at the Cinefondation Selection at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. Filmmaker Magazine named Zoabi “one of the Top 25 New Faces of Independent Cinema.” Man Without a Cell Phone is Zoabi’s feature film debut.