Luis Puenzo - President

Luis Puenzo was born in Buenos Aires. He has had a long and successful career in feature films, advertising and documentaries both at home and internationally. He founded his own production company at a young age. As a writer and director he is best known for The Official Story (1985), which was the first Latin American film to win the Academy Award® for Best Foreign Language Film. His other films include Old Gringo (1989), The Plague (1992) and The Whore and the Whale (2004). He also produced his daughter Lucía Puenzo’s Festival de Cannes selection XXY (2007). His company, Historias Cinematográficas, is involved in production and postproduction services in Spain and a number of Latin American nations, and forms a group with his advertising company, Puenzo Hnos.

Faouzi Bensaïdi

Faouzi Bensaïdi made his first short film, The Cliff, in 1997; it won 23 prizes at festivals around the world. In 2000, he directed two shorts: The Wall, which won a prize at the Festival de Cannes, and The Rain Line, which won a prize at the Venice Film Festival. His first feature film, A Thousand Months, won two prizes at Cannes and WWW – What a Wonderful World (2006) was selected for the Venice Film Festival..

Karim Aïnouz

Karim Aïnouz is a filmmaker and visual artist. His feature-film debut, Madame Satã, premiered in 2002 at the Festival de Cannes. Suely in the Sky, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2006. His films have received numerous international awards. His art installations have been shown in the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial (1997) and the São Paulo Biennial (2004).

Siddiq Barmak

Siddiq Barmak was born in Afghanistan in 1962. He earned an MA in cinema from the VGIK institute in Moscow. His debut feature, Osama (2003), won awards at the Festival de Cannes and the Pusan Film Festival. His second film, Opium War (2008), was named Best Film at the Rome Film Festival and was named best foreign-language film at the Golden Globe Awards.

Sulaf Fawakherji

Sulaf Fawakherji is one of Syria’s most celebrated film and television personalities. She has appeared in five feature films and over 50 television shows, garnering several awards for her work as well as participating in numerous film festivals, including visits to Cannes in 2006 and 2008 for her films Halim and Baby Doll.

Behrooz Hashemian

Behrooz Hashemian was born in Iran and earned a degree in film production from Hunter College in New York. He is the cofounder of Silkroad Productions, based in Paris, which specialized in international co-productions with up-and-coming directors. He has produced crucial films by some of the most highly-regarded auteurs working today, including Dervi! Zaim, Ye!im Ustao"lu, Rashid Masharawi, Michael Winter bottom, Amir Naderi, Bahram Beyzaie and Bahman Ghobadi.

Salah Marei

Salah Marei was born in Egypt and graduated with a degree in art direction for films from the Cairo Cinema Institute. He has worked as an art director on 38 Egyptian feature films, including The Mummy / The Night of Counting the Years (Shadi Abdel-Salam, 1969 - see page 101). His many accolades over the years include prizes from the National Film Festival of Egypt and the Arab Film Festival of Rotterdam.

Louie Psihoyos

Louie Psihoyos was born in Iowa. He worked as a photographer at National Geographic magazine for many years, becoming one of the most renowned photographers in the world. He is especially known for his undersea work. This, along with his interest in ocean activism, led to his motion-picture directorial debut, The Cove (2009), a documentary about dolphin advocate Ric O’Barry, which played at the Festival, which won an Academy Award® for Best Documentary.

Samir

Samir was born in Baghdad and grew up in Switzerland. He writes, directs and produces film, video and electronic cinema. His work includes the documentary essay Babylon 2 (1993) and the documentary Forget Baghdad (2002). Snow White (2005) won a number of festival awards. In 1994 he co-founded Dschoint Ventshr Filmproduktion. He is currently working on a documentary entitled Iraqi Odyssey, about his own family living in diaspora.

Shirin Neshat

Shirin is an Iranian-born visual filmmaker who lives in New York. Her work has been presented in numerous solo exhibitions at major galleries and museums all over the world, including: National Museum of Contemporary Arts, Athens; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Serpentine Gallery, London; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Leon; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Musee d’Art Contemporain de Montréal; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Castello di Rivoli, Turin; and Kunsthalle Wien. She was awarded the Golden Lion at the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999 for her video work and a decade later her feature-film debut, Women Without Men won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

Suheir Hammad

Suheir Hammad played the lead in Annemarie Jacir’s Salt of this Sea (2008). She is the author of breaking poems, and the recipient of a 2009 American Book Award and the Arab American Book award for Poetry 2009. Her other books are Zaatar Diva, Born Palestinian, Born Black and Drops of this Story. Her work has been widely anthologized and also adapted for theater. Her produced plays include Blood Trinity and breaking letter(s), and the libretto for Re-Orientalism.

Ali Mostafa

Ali Mostafa earned an MA from the London Film School. He gained attention at a number of international festivals with his graduation film Under the Sun (2006), which was named Best Emirates Film at the Emirates Film Competition. His debut feature film, City of Life (2010), established him as one of the pre-eminent filmmakers from the UAE.

Elia Suleiman- President

Elia Suleiman was born in Nazareth. In the 1980s, he lived in New York, where he directed his first two award-winning short films, Introduction to the End of an Argument (1990) and Homage by Assassination (1992). Later he ran the Film and Media department at Birzeit University in Jerusalem and published essays about film in English, Arabic and French. His first feature film, Chronicle of a Disappearance (1996), won the prize for best first film at the Venice Film Festival. Divine Intervention (2002) won the Jury Prize at the Festival de Cannes. His latest film, The Time that Remains (2009) won the Black Pearl Award for Best Middle Eastern Narrative Film at the Festival. In 2009 he was named Middle East filmmaker of the year by Variety.

Khaled Abol Naga

Khaled Abol Naga studied engineering in Cairo and spacecraft design at the University of Surrey. But his passion was for theater and he moved on to study acting and directing in Egypt and the USA. He has been involved on both sides of the camera since co-producing 2009’s Heliopolis (Ahmed Abdallah) which played at over a dozen festivals (including this one in 2009). He was appointed a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in 2007.

Nandana Sen

Nandana Sen grew up in Europe, India and America, and was deeply influenced by Indiana Jones, U2, Marvel Comics and Salman Rushdie. She studied acting at the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and also attended Harvard University. She is well known as a star of Bengali cinema. In addition to acting, she is a dancer and a UNICEF ambassador for child protection.

Lita Stantic

Lita Stantic is an Argentine producer, writer and director. She is one of the key figures of the New Argentine Cinema. Her production credits include Crane World (1999), The Swamp (2001), Red Bear (2001), Suddenly (2002), The Holy Girl (2004) and Lamb of God (2008).

Debra Zimmerman

Debra Zimmerman has been the executive director of Women Make Movies, the world’s leading non-profit distributor of films made by and about women, since 1983. Women Make Movies have consistently worked with important directors such as Kim Longinotto, Louise Carré, Laura Mulvey and Julie Dash. The company distributes Longinotto’s Pink Saris (2010) and Laura Poitras’ The Oath (2010), both of which are screening at the Festival this year.

Nouri Bouzid - President

Nouri Bouzid was born in Tunisia. He studied film at IDHEC and then at INSAS in Brussels. He was tried and convicted by the Tunisian government for his involvement with a socialist organization and spent five years in prison. After his release he worked as an assistant director on numerous productions. His debut feature, Man of Ashes (1986) won awards at the Festival de Cannes and the Carthage Film Festival. Golden Horseshoes (1989) and Bent familia (1997) were also widely screened and acclaimed. Since then he has become one of the most respected writers and directors from the Maghreb. His other films include Clay Dolls (2002) and Making Of (2006). He was awarded the Tunisian Presidential Award for Film in 1990.

Abdullah Hassan Ahmed

Abdullah Hassan Ahmed is a prominent Emirati filmmaker. He has won awards at the Gulf Film Festival, the Arab Film Festival in San Francisco, the Emirates Film Competition and the Dubai International Film Festival. He was named Best Young Film Director by Digital Studio magazine. He is the co- founder of Faradees Group and Reflective Art Group.

Ahmed Salmeen Al Ali

Ahmed Salmeen Al Ali is an award-winning screenwriter and editor who has enjoyed a long and successful career. His films have been screened in festivals around the world and have won several awards, including a Bronze Muhr Award at the Dubai International Film Festival for his screenplay The Mattress. He is a founding member of Breaths Productions.

Haifaa Al Mansour

Haifaa Al Mansour is one of the first Saudi woman film directors, and has always strived to offer Saudi women a voice through her work. Haifaa received her MA in Directing and Film Criticism from the University of Sydney, and currently fills her time working on the television show More than a Woman, which is broadcast by the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation.

Kasim Abid

Kasim Abid was born in Baghdad and is based in London. His acclaimed films include Amid the Alien Corn (1991); Naji an Ali: An Artist with Vision (1999); Surda Checkpoint (2005) and Life After the Fall (2008), which was named best film at the Munich International Film Festival and the Arab Film Festival of California.

Ibrahim Almulla

Ibrahim Almulla was born in Sharjah. He is a poet and screenwriter based in Abu Dhabi. His screenplays have won a number of prizes at regional festivals, including the Emirates Film Competition, and he has scripted several award winning documentaries for Sharjah TV. He has published many articles about poetry and cinema in local newspapers and magazines, and has published two collections of poetry: "Desert in Baskets" (1997) and "I Left My Sight in a Well" (2003). Currently he works as a journalist for Al Ittihad.

Mohamad Hassan

Mohamad Hassan is an author and screenwriter who has been associated with the young film movement in the UAE for many years. The films he has written have been screened at festivals all over the world, and include Small Sky (Abdullah Hassan Ahmed, 2006), Blood Wedding (Saeed Salmeen Al Murry, 2007) and Bint Mariam (Salmeen Al Murry, 2008) and Paradise Evening (Juma Al Sahli, 2009), which screened at the Festival. He has also published novels and written drama for television. In 2004 he established Faradees Group, a pioneering Emirati film production company.

Saleh Karameh el-Amiri

Saleh Karameh el-Amiri is a playwright and director who is a founding figure in the establishment of the theater scene in Abu Dhabi. Considered an auteur with a penchant for experimentalism, he has authored several plays that have been performed on stage in Abu Dhabi and in the Arab world. He has also published novels and directed several films, including Henna which screened in competition at the Festival in 2009. His work in theater and film has brought him a number of accolades.

In the twenty years since its foundation, NETPAC has established itself as the leading platform for the discovery and promotion of Asian cinema. NETPAC gave early expression to the need to acknowledge and recognise the emergence of new cinematic talent among Asians. It took under its wing a quarterly publication, Cinemaya, which provided a forum for mostly Asian critics, writers and scholars to document and evaluate Asian films and subsequently add them to the Asian cinema canon. NETPAC’s next major contribution was the institution of the NETPAC Award at international film festivals: as more Asian films were selected for exhibition for world audiences, a yardstick for quality was necessary that matched the competitive spirit fuelling the creative urges of young Asian filmmakers. The NETPAC Award is now given at 28 international film festivals in 21 countries on five continents. The jury at ADFF is chaired by Alberto Elena Díaz, Director of the Granada Film Festival “Cines del Sur.” The other jury members are Ms. Do Kyung Kim (Korea) and Cuneyt Cebenoyan (Turkey).