Luay Fadhil Abbas was born in 1982 in Baghdad. He studied film at the New York Film Academy in Abu Dhabi and Los Angeles and worked on film projects with Oday Rasheed and Mohamed Al-Daradji. His films include See Them, Pastel, “Frame,” and “Cotton,” for which he won Best Director in the shorts competition category and an Enjaaz Award from the Dubai International Film Festival.
Ahmad Abdalla is a filmmaker from Cairo and the director of Rags & Tatters, Microphone, and Heliopolis. He holds a degree in music education and had worked as a film editor since 2003, before turning to directing. Abdalla was born and lives in Cairo, Egypt.
Yahya Al-Allaq was born in Baghdad. He has a master’s degree in filmmaking from the New York Film Academy in Los Angeles. Yahya has worked on the Iraqi features of filmmaker Mohamed Al-Daradji. Yahya has also directed the films My Name Is Mohammed and COLA, which won prizes at Beirut International Film Festival and the Gulf Film Festival.
Jamal Ali is from Baghdad. He graduated from Spartan College of Aeronautics in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1979 and had a career as an aircraft maintenance engineer for Iraqi Airways. His wife, an anesthesiologist, and two children fled to Minneapolis in 2009.
Medoo Ali studied at the Centre of Fine Arts in Baghdad. He has worked on a number of Iraqi feature films including those of Mohamed Al-Daradji and Oday Rasheed. Ali directed his first short film, “Children of War” and co-directed “Nesmas Birds” as part of a workshop through the Iraqi Independent Film Centre. He is now preparing for his next short film with the Iraqi Independent Film Centre.
Najwan Ali is a graduate of the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad. She has directed two other films, “Critical Days” and “Book of Love. She is currently enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts, studying in the Department of Audio, Visual and Scenario.
Saad Ali attends the Jumeirah English Speaking School in Dubai.
Amel Al-Sammarraie, a hematologist, and Mohammed Raif, a civil engineer, are from Baghdad. Married in 1983, they have three children and one grandchild. They fled to the Twin Cities as refugees in 2013.
Zaid Alshammaa is from Baghdad. Interrupting his college education in Iraq, he fled to Minnesota in 2010. He currently works in a tobacco shop in Northeast Minneapolis.
Suha Araj was selected for the Emerging Visions program by IFP and the Lincoln Center. She has served on the film selection committee of the Arab Film Festival in San Francisco and on the LunaFest advisory board. Her short film “I AM Palestine” has screened widely and is used as an educational tool. She is co-founder of DivineCaroline.com, a publishing platform for women to tell their stories. Araj currently teaches with the Tribeca Institute.
Kaouther Ben Hania studied cinema in Tunisia and France. Her films include the short “Me, My Sister and The ‘Thing”’ (2006), and the feature documentary Imams Go to School, which premiered at International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) 2010. Kaouther is currently directing episodes of the 3D animated series “Borj Elouloum” (“Tour of Science”) for the Al Jazeera Children’s Channel. She is also developing her second feature documentary Zaineb Hates the Snow with CINETELEFILMS.
Mahmoud Ben Mahmoud was born in 1947 and studied cinema in Belgium in the 1970s. His films include the music documentary Les Mille et Une Voix (2000) and three features: Traversées (1982), ChichKhan (1992), and Les Siestes Grenadine, which won the Special Jury Prize in Turin in 1999. He currently teaches screenwriting at the Université Libre in Brussels.
Zeina Daccache is the founder and director of Catharsis Lebanese Center for Drama Therapy and the director of the award-winning film 12 Angry Lebanese (2009) which screened at 2011 TCAFF. This film similar is to Scheherazade’s Diary as it was based on a play performed by female inmates from Roumieh Prison in Lebanon. In 2013, she directed the play From the Bottom of My Brain with residents of Al Fanar psychiatric hospital.
Mais Darwazah’s career started with short experimental films. She received the Chevening scholarship from the British Council, completing a master’s in Documentary Directing at Edinburgh College of Art in 2007. Her graduation film, Take Me Home (2007), screened in over 20 international festivals. In the Arab documentary collective Family Albums she completed “The Dinner” (2012), co-produced with ARTE France; this film received the Special Mention audience award at Cinemed 2012. She works and resides in Jordan.
Nathan Fisher grew up in the Twin Cities. He has an MA in Media Studies with an emphasis in documentary film production from the New School in New York. His 2010 feature documentary The Unreturned, shot in Jordan and Syria, tells the story of five middle-class Iraqi refugees caught in an absurdist purgatory of endless bureaucracy, dwindling life savings, and forced idleness. Since 2012, he has been working with the local Twin Cities Iraqi community to produce a series of short films.
Jessica Habie is founder of Eyes Infinite Films. Her films include “Mandatory Service” (2008 Tribeca Film Festival Best Documentary Short Award), “Art and Apathy”, and “Beyond Blue and Gray”, (with creative partner Nirah Shirazipour, awarded a Cannes Short Film Corner prize). Proceeds for her current feature Mars at Sunrise will go to Fajr Falestine Film Fund, supporting the production of genre-defying films from the Palestinian Diaspora.
Fadi Haddad is the creative producer of the award-winning Jordanian feature film The Last Friday (2010), which screened at the 2013 TCAFF. His film “High Heels” won the Best Jordanian Short Film Award in the Franco-Arab Film Festival in 2009. Fadi holds an MFA from the Red Sea Institute of Cinematic Arts in Jordan. He is an assistant professor of digital production and storytelling at Mohammed Bin Rashid School for Communication in the American University in Dubai.
Omar Robert Hamilton is a filmmaker and producer of the Palestine Festival of Literature. He is also a founding member of the Mosireen Collective in Cairo. His short documentaries on the Egyptian Revolution have helped make Mosireen the most watched non-profit YouTube channel in Egypt. His films have appeared on the BBC, Al Jazeera, and several domestic Egyptian channels. His articles and photographs have been published in the Guardian, Jadaliyya, The Economist, and elsewhere.
Mohanad Hayal was born in 1985 in Nasiriyah, Iraq. After graduating from the Faculty of Fine Arts & Cinema in 2010, he began to work on film projects with Mohamed Al-Daradji and Oday Rasheed. He has made five short films including “City Heart,” “Wrong,” “Furat,” and “Screenplay.” Hayal now works for the Iraqi Independent Film Center.
Mahmoud Ibrahim is a Lebanese-born Palestinian refugee who spent most of his life in Iraq. Along with his wife and children, he fled to Minnesota in 2013. He currently works as a forklift operator in Blaine.
Sara Ishaq grew up in Sana’a and moved to Edinburgh to pursue an MFA. Her 2011 return to Yemen to shoot a documentary coincided with the onset of the Yemeni uprising. She began reporting on the BBC and co-founded the media activist collaborative #SupportYemen. Her films are “Karama Has no Walls” and the feature The Mulberry House. Based between Egypt and Yemen, she is developing a Yemeni production house and film academy for aspiring Yemeni filmmakers.
Naji Ismail is a filmmaker from northern Egypt. He graduated from the High Cinema Institute, Giza, Egypt, in 2005 with a degree in directing. Since then he has taken part in a number of writing, producing, and documentary workshops. In December 2012, Ismail founded and launched his own production company, Rahala.
Mahmoud Kaabour is from Lebanon and lives in the United Arab Emirates. His film Teta, Alf Marra (Grandma, a Thousand Times) received numerous awards and screened in 50+ cities worldwide (including Minneapolis in the 2011 TCAFF). Kaabour’s first film, Being Osama (2005 TCAFF), a documentary about six men sharing bin Laden’s first name, received four international awards and aired internationally on television. He is the founder and managing director of Veritas Films, the UAE’s leading non-fiction production company.
Sarah Kanan’s family fled Iraq in 1991. She grew up in Iran and then Minnesota, recently graduating from the University of Minnesota with a triple major in Business Management and Marketing, Design, and Child Psychology. Although Sarah has never lived in Iraq, she feels a strong passion and yearning for the culture and traditions. She currently works as a Business Analyst for General Electric.
Mohamed Khan has made many acclaimed films since the late 1970s, beginning with Darbet Shams (1978) with Nour El Sherif, which was a critical and a commercial hit. His other films include Fares Al-Madina (1991), Ayam El-Sadat (2001), and Fi Shaket Masr El Gedeeda (2007). Three of his films were part of the Dubai International Film Festival’s 100 Greatest Arab Films: El Harrif (1983), Zawgat Ragol Mohim (1988), and Ahlam Hind we Kamilia (1988).
Toufic Khreich was born and raised in South Lebanon. He moved to Beirut for university and graduated from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts (ALBA) in 2003 with the short film “This is the Voice of the South”. Besides “Troubled Waters”, Khreich has directed a number of commercials and documentaries and has acted in many shorts. He is preparing to shoot his first feature Cold Coffee.
Alex Lora, Barcelona-born, received an MFA in Media Arts production from City College New York as a Fulbright scholar and went on to work internationally as an editor, cinematographer, writer, and director. Lora’s short films have been in the official selection of Sundance, Berlinale Talent Campus, and Cannes Short Film Corner. He has been nominated once for the Oscars Student Academy Awards and twice for the Catalan Academy Awards (Gaudi Award).
Mohamad Malas was born in 1945 in the Golan. He quintessentially represents Syrian auteur cinema and has received wide international acclaim and numerous awards. After working as a teacher in Damascus while studying at the Faculty of Philosophy, Malas received a scholarship to study filmmaking at the renowned Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK). His films include Dreams of the City (1983), The Night (1992) and Passion (2005).
Laïla Marrakchi (born in Morocco) studied cinematography at the University of Paris III. She has directed the short films “L’Horizon Perdu” (2000), “Deux Cents Dirhams” (2002), and “Momo Mambo” (2003). Her debut feature Marock (2005) screened at the Cannes Film Festival.
Rahul Rajyaguru attends Our Own High School in Dubai.
Eliane Raheb was born in Lebanon and is the director of two short films—“The Last Screening” and “Meeting.” She has also directed the short documentaries Karib Baiid (So Near Yet So Far), Intihar (Suicide) and Hayda Lubnan (This is Lebanon), which received the Excellency Award at the Yamagata Film Festival and was broadcast on ARTE/ZDF/ Al Jadeed and NHK. Layali Bala Noom (Sleepless Nights) is her first feature documentary.
Amr Salama has directed three feature films: On A Day Like Today (2008), Asmaa (2011), and Excuse my French (2014). He also co-directed the documentary Tahrir 2011: the Good, the Bad & the Politician. A blogger and active writer, Salama has written two books, A Kiosk Guy: A Journey in Search of the Handlebars and Return to Sender: Short Stories, Sort Of, as well as articles published in several newspapers and magazines.
Adnan Shati was born in the marshes of southern Iraq. He moved to Minnesota in 1990. He has worked as a freelance artist most of his adult life and has shown his work in the United States, Europe and the Middle East. He is also a special education teacher in Minneapolis.
Nadia Shihab is a filmmaker and musician based in San Francisco. She has received awards from the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, Pacific Pioneer Fund, and the Bay Area Video Coalition, and has been a filmmaker-in-residence with the San Francisco Film Society. She has a master’s degree in city planning from the University of California, Berkeley and was a Fulbright scholar to Turkey in 2006.
Antonio Tibaldi was born in Australia, raised in Europe, and lives in NYC. His film credits include On My Own (2006), Claudine’s Return (1998), and Little Boy Blue (1997) and screenings at major festivals including Sundance, Berlin, San Sebastian, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Montreal, and Hamptons. He is also an active documentarian. His work with UNTV (United Nations TV) has taken him hroughout the world covering underreported stories.
Ahmed Yassin was involved in the feature film Ahlaam, made after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. He co-wrote the short film “My Name is Mohammed” and directed the short film “Between the Two Banks.” He received his master’s in filmmaking at the London Film School. He works as a documentary filmmaker for various satellite stations in London.