Nabil Maleh - President

Nabil Maleh is a film director, screenwriter, producer, painter, designer and poet. He is considered the father of modern Syrian cinema and one of the leading masters of Arab cinema. He earned his Master’s degree from the film academy FAMU in Prague and has published more than 1,000 articles, short stories, essays and poems. He is the writer and director of 120 short, experimental and documentary works and 12 feature-length films, including The Extras and The Leopard, which was voted one of the top 50 Asian films of all time in a Korean poll a few years ago, in addition to being named as one of the Immortal Masterpieces of Asian Cinema at the 2005 Pusan International Film Festival. He has been honored with more than 60 awards at international film festivals, including several lifetime achievement awards. Several of his films are in the curricula of international film schools, and he has taught film direction, acting, writing and aesthetics at many universities, centers and associations, including Austin University in Texas and the University of California in Los Angeles.

Marianne Denicourt

Marianne Denicourt made her screen debut in L’Argent with Robert Bresson. She studied under Pa­trice Chéreau at the École du théâtre des Amandiers in Nanterre. She worked with Chéreau on three occa­sions: on screen in Hôtel de France, on stage in Pla­tonov and at the festival of Avignon, where she played Ophelia in Hamlet. She has worked under the direction of many of France’s greatest filmmakers, including Jacques Doillon, Benoît Jacquot, Claude Lelouch, Ro­main Goupil, Jacques Rivette (with whom she collabo­rated on the screenplay of Haut, bas, fragile in 1995), Raoul Ruiz, Patrick Timsit, François Favrat and Mona Achache among many others. At the same time, she continued to work in theater under the direction of Luc Bondy, Louis-Do de Lencquesaing, Bernard Murat and Marc Paquien. She played the title role in Joan at the Stake, the opera by Arthur Honegger and Paul Claudel.

Laila Eloui

Laila Eloui was born in Cairo to an Egyptian father and Greek mother. She began her career at age seven with radio, TV and film appearances. She has since appeared in more than 70 films, 16 TV serials and numerous stage plays. She has been honored with awards for her acting at many international film fes­tivals, including a lifetime achievement award at the Cairo International Film Festival. Some of her films in­clude Left Without Return (1984), Al Harafish (1985), The Era of Wolves (1986), All This Love (1987), Samaa Hoss (1989), The Rapist (1989), The Kidnapped (1991), The Revolving Stone (1992), Al Hagama (1992), Little Love Much Violence (1994), Traffic Lights (1995), La vie ma passion (1996), A Girl Named Apple (1996), Destiny (1997), The 7 Colors of the Sky (2007) and I Love Cinema (2004).

Lucinda Englehart

Lucinda Englehart is Head of Production at Aramid, a London-based film finance company that has pro­vided finance for more than 35 independent feature films in the last few years, including Blue Valentine, Shark Night 3-D, In the Loop, Dorian Gray and Cheri. Her own producing credits include My Marlon and Brando, which won more than 20 prizes in 2008 including Best New Narrative at Tribeca; Sea Point Days; U-Carmen eKhayelitsha, a Golden Bear winner at Berlin in 2005; and most recently Do Not Forget Me Istanbul. She recently set up an initiative in part­nership with luxury brand LVMH that provides an in­novative interface between London-based financial institutions and the independent film world.

George Sluizer

George Sluizer is a Dutch filmmaker born in Paris. He attended IDHEC, the French Institute of Cinema. His first film, the documentary Hold Back the Sea (1961), won an award at the Berlin International Film Festi­val. The award-winning thriller The Vanishing (1988) brought Sluizer wider recognition. His other films in­clude Joao and the Knife (1971), Twice a Woman (1979), Utz (1991), Crimetime (1995), The Commissioner (1979) and Stoneraft (2002). His production credits include Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo (1982). His trilogy of doc­umentaries about a Palestinian family made between 1974 and 1983, The Land of the Fathers, screened at ADFF in 2008, as did his film about Palestinian refu­gee camps in Beirut, Homeland, which was named Best Documentary from the Arab World in 2010.

Tahani Rached- President

Tahani Rached was born in Egypt and settled in Canada in 1966. She attended Montreal’s École des Beaux-Arts and made her first film, Pour faire changement, in 1972. In 1979, she made her first fea­ture-length film, Les Voleurs de jobs, a documentary on immigration. This was followed by six half-hour documentaries for Radio-Quebec on Quebec’s Arab community. As a staff filmmaker for the National Film Board of Canada from 1980 to 2004, Rached tackled sensitive topics in the films Beirut! Not Enough Death to Go Round (1983), Au Chic Resto Pop (1990) and Doctors with Heart (1993). Four Women of Egypt (1997) features four women united in their search for meaning and tolerance through 50 years of Egyptian history. Soraida, A Woman of Palestine (2004) cap­tures the reflections, concerns and imagination of a Palestinian woman, her family and neighborhood, and the soul of a nation doing its best to survive war and occupation. In 2005, Rached returned to Egypt to direct These Girls, produced by Studio Masr, which also produced her Neighbors (2009). Rached is cur­rently working on a documentary series as well as the feature documentary A Breath of Air.

Anwar Jamal

Anwar Jamal is a multiple award-winning filmmaker based in New Delhi. He has made critically acclaimed documentaries on a wide array of social, political and cultural themes. He also wrote, produced and directed a feature-length fiction film, Swaraaj – The Little Republic, on the theme of women’s empower­ment and the politics of water in rural India. He grew up in Bareilly, in western Uttar Pradesh. He recently completed a series of 10 short films promoting heri­tage conservation for the National Mission on Monu­ments and Antiquities. His second feature-length fiction film as director is currently in development.

Victor Kossakovsky

Victor Kossakovsky was born in St. Petersburg. His films have won more than 100 prizes at film fes­tivals around the word. His filmography includes Losev (1989), The Other Day (1991), The Belovs (1992), Wednesday 19.07.1961 (1997), Pavel and Lyalya (1998), I Loved You (2000), Tishe! (2002), Svyato (2005) and Vivan las Antipodas! (2011). Among this highly regard­ed filmmaker’s many honors are a Special Jury Award from IDFA for Pavel and Lyalya, and, for Wednesday 19.07.1961, the Documentary Award at Edinburgh and the Award of Honor from Karlovy Vary.

Mahmoud Al Massad

Mahmoud Al Massad grew up in Jordan and left his homeland for Europe, seeking the opportunity to make films. In the Netherlands, Germany and Italy he wrote, produced and directed more than 10 short films; in addition, his three feature-length documen­taries received international critical acclaim. His films have screened at more than 120 international film festivals, reaching audiences across Europe, the Middle East and the Gulf Region. He was invited to the 2007 Sundance Director’s Lab, and was named the 2003 Arab World Kids Institute Ambassador of culture. His best-known films include Shater Hassan (2002); Recycle (2007), which won for best cinema­tography at Sundance among many other awards; and This Is My Picture When I Was Dead (2010); which won Best Documentary at Dubai.

Mostafa Messnaoui

Mostafa Messnaoui is a writer, film critic, transla­tor and teacher from Morocco. His books include the short story collection Tariq Who Didn’t Invade Al Andaluss (1979), O Laughing Country (1988), On Moroccan Cinema (2001) and Witness’s Seven Dreams (2009). He has also founded several jour­nalistic publications, the Festival International du Théâtre Universitaire de Casablanca and the audio-visual department at Hassan II University in Casa­blanca. He has been a member of the Union of Mo­roccan Writers since 1973 and a member of its central bureau from 1979 to 1983. From 1998 until 2001 he was an advisor to the Moroccan Ministry of Culture.

Bahman Ghobadi - President

Bahman Ghobadi was born in Baneh, in Kurdistan, Iran near the Iraqi border, the first son in a family of seven siblings. When he was 12, civil disputes caused his entire family to immigrate to Sanandaj (the center of Kurdistan Province in Iran). After high school, he continued his studies in Tehran, getting a B.A. degree in film directing from the Iranian Broadcasting College, although he never properly graduated because he believed that he would learn more by creating short films than by formal study. It was his direct experience with film that helped him to expand his individualistic voice and vision of the world. His initial films were short documentaries, some shot on 8mm, and through the ’90s they began to receive attention and awards; his Life in Fog became known as “the most famous documentary in the history of Iranian cinema,” and the international awards it received opened the door to feature filmmaking for Ghobadi. A Time for Drunken Horses was awarded the Caméra d’Or for best first feature at Cannes in 2000, and his subsequent work, including Turtles Can Fly (2004) and Half Moon (2006), were also widely honored. His last film, No One Knows About Persian Cats, received the audience prize here in Abu Dhabi at our 2009 edition.

Paul Baboudjian

Paul Baboudjian started his career as an editor, cinematographer and producer, working mainly in the television industry. His experience producing short films and documentary projects in various countries of the Mediterranean area contributed to his international reputation. He set up his own business in the Gulf countries, contributing to building a stronger local film production environment. He actively contributed to the set-up of the Screen Institute Beirut and is strongly committed to promoting and developing an Arab screen culture that reflects the views, issues and interests of audiences and communities in the Arab world, and fosters international collaboration and networks. He produced Bahij Hojeij’s award-wining Here Comes the Rain, which won many regional and international awards, the first of which was a Black Pearl Award for Best Narrative Feature from the Arab World at ADFF last year.

Marwan Hamed

Marwan Hamed first found success with his 40-minute film Lilly, based on a short story by the famous writer Yousef Idrees. The film won a number of international awards and was sold to many TV channels, including ARTE. His first feature film was The Yacoubian Building (2006), based on the international best seller by Alaa El Aswany. The film was considered the most expensive Egyptian film ever and featured an all-star Egyptian cast, including Adel Imam. It was screened all over the world, including at the Berlinale, and won the award for best new narrative filmmaker at Tribeca in New York. His second feature, Ibrahim Labyad (2009), is considered to be one of the most shocking movies about the crime world in the Egyptian slums. Hamed is one of the directors of 18 Days, which screens at the Festival following a controversial premiere at Cannes.

Annemarie Jacir

Annemarie Jacir is an internationally acclaimed film­maker currently living in Jordan after many years in the United States. She has written and directed 12 films, two of which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Her first feature film, Salt of this Sea, was selected to screen in Un Certain Regard and was Palestine’s official submission to the Academy Awards. It won the pres­tigious FIPRESCI Critic’s Prize, Best Film in Milan and 16 other international awards. Named one of Filmmak­er magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Cinema, Jacir teaches screenwriting and works as an editor and film curator. In 2011, renowned Chinese director Zhang Yimou selected her to be his first protégée as part of the Rolex Arts Initiative. She lives in Amman and is cur­rently in post-production on her new film When I Saw You, which is supported by ADFF’s SANAD fund.

Aimee Mullins

Aimee Mullins made her film debut in the avant-garde film Cremaster 3 by contemporary artist Matthew Bar­ney. It was first presented in the United States at the Guggenheim Museum in 2003. Aimee first received worldwide media attention as an athlete. Born without fibulae, she had both her legs amputated below the knee on her first birthday. Aimee developed a love of com­petitive sports and became the first amputee in history to compete as a runner in the NCAA. With woven car­bon-fiber prostheses, she went on to set world records in the 100 meter, the 200 meter and the long jump. After a profile in Life magazine, the world took notice. In 1999, Aimee made her runway debut in London for fashion designer Alexander McQueen. Her triumphant turn cap­tured the attention of the fashion media, propelling her into such fashion magazines as Vogue, Glamour and Elle.

Khasiaba Al Dalel

Khasiaba Al Dalel is a Master’s student at the Masdar Institute in the engineering and systems management program. She received her Bachelor’s degree in architec­tural engineering from United Arab Emir­ates University. Al Dalel worked for three years in Emaar Properties at Downtown Burj Khalifa Development and one year in Dubai Municipality as a value engineer. At the Masdar Institute, her main research in­terest is retrofitting existing buildings and green building technologies. When not in school, she enjoys photography

Yu-Kuang Lin

Yu-Kuang Lin is a student of engineering systems and management at the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology. His research focuses on investigating the best technology strategy direction for Masdar. Prior to joining Masdar Institute, he contrib­uted to a fuel-cell scooter project during his studies at National Taiwan University in 2007. Lin was also involved in the TiC100 Entrepreneur Contest held by Advantech Inc. in 2009. He developed a new solution to price comparison behavior by inventing a price-searching platform on the mobile phone network, competed with more than 100 teams nationwide, and won the Tech­nology Excellence Award in the final.

Mohamed Asaad

Mohamed Asaad Taher is a Fellow at the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology and a final-year PhD student at Imperial Col­lege London. His research interests include sustainable energy systems modeling, op­timization and techno-economic evalua­tion. Prior to his post-graduate studies, he worked at Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Authority. He holds a B.Eng in chemical en­gineering from the University of Birming­ham, and is a recipient of the distinguished student scholarship from the UAE Ministry of Presidential Affairs. He received awards from H.H. Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (2004) and H.H. Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan (2008) in recognition of his academic achievements.

Dr. Amal Al Ghaferi- Advisor

Dr. Amal Al Ghaferi is an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Masdar Institute and a research scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Science and Technology. She was an assistant professor at UAE University from 2007 to 2010. Al Ghaferi attended Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Lehigh University, the University of Pittsburgh, where she received her PhD, and UAE University, where she received a Bachelor’s degree in physics. She has received honors and/or awards from the UK Prime Minister’s Initiative, the Women in Science and Technology Fellowship from the USA Department of State at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the Sheikh Rashid Scientific Distinction Award.

Habib Attia- President

Habib Attia was born in Tunis. He is the managing director of Cine­telefilms, one of the leading production companies in Tunisia and the region. His work focuses on fiction and documentary projects dealing with contemporary sociocultural issues. His most recent ventures in­clude No More Fear, Tunisian director Mourad Ben Cheikh’s feature-length documentary about the Tunisian revolution of January 2011. The film was included in the official selection of the 64th Cannes Film Fes­tival. Attia is also a member of the Producers’ Network of the Cannes Film Festival and EURODOC, and the coordinator of the Producers’ Network of the Carthage International Film Festival.

Nujoom Alghanem

Nujoom Alghanem is a poet and award-winning filmmaker from the United Arab Emirates, where she currently lives and works. She was born in Dubai and holds a BSc in video production from Ohio University and an MA in film production from Griffith University in Australia. In the early days of her career she worked as a journalist, head of training and media HR development, secretary of executive committees, and director of new media. She is an active member in the cultural life of the UAE and the Gulf region and has published eight books of poetry. She produced and directed eight acclaimed films and has been called “the poet of UAE cinema.”

Ellen M. Harrington

Ellen M. Harrington is the Director of Exhibitions and Special Events for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Since 1993, she has curated, organized and designed the installations for nearly 80 exhibitions of motion-picture materials, as well as producing hundreds of ongoing public film programs including screenings, retrospectives, tributes and educational programming for the Academy’s two theaters in Los Angeles. She regularly produces events with partner cultural organizations throughout the United States and at film festivals around the world. She co-created the Academy’s Media Literacy Program, and recently developed and directs the Academy’s International Outreach Program, which since 2007 has brought delegations of top Academy members to work with international filmmaking communities in Vietnam, Iran, Cuba, Kenya and Rwanda.

Ahmed El Maânouni- President

Ahmed El Maânouni is a writer, director, cinematog­rapher and producer born in Casablanca. In 1978 he directed Oh the Days!, the first Moroccan film ever selected for the Cannes Film Festival and winner of the Grand Prix at the Mannheim Film Festival. The film will screen as part of the Mapping Subjectiv­ity series at ADFF this year. His widely acclaimed Trances (1982), the first film restored by the World Cinema Foundation, was presented by Martin Scors­ese at Cannes in 2007. His most recent film, Burned Hearts (2007), won the Grand Prix at the National Film Festival of Tangiers and was awarded many in­ternational prizes. His documentary films have con­sistently interrogated colonial history and its impact on Moroccan memory. In 2007 he was honored as an Officer of the Ordre des Arts et Lettres in France.

Abdullah Al Eyaf

Abdullah Al Eyaf is a prominent Saudi filmmaker. He has won several awards for his films Cinema 500km (2006), A Frame (2007), Rain (2008) and Aayesh (2010). His films have been shown in numerous film festivals around the world. He has written hundreds of articles in newspaper columns in local and inter­national newspapers and magazines. He received a Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and is the founder of Inspire Works Productions.

Maysoon Pachachi

Maysoon Pachachi is a London-based filmmaker of Iraqi origin. She holds an Honours Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from University College Lon­don, and an MA from the London Film School. She has directed nine documentary films, including the prize-winning Iranian Journey; Bitter Water, which is about a Palestinian camp in Beirut; Return to the Land of Wonders, in which she documents her return to Iraq in 2004; and Our Feelings Took the Pictures: Open Shutters Iraq. She has taught film directing and editing in the UK and the Middle East. In 2004, she co-founded a free-of-charge film-training center in Baghdad. She is currently developing the fiction feature film Nothing Doing in Baghdad with funding from SANAD.

Khadija Al Salami

Khadija Al Salami is Yemen’s first woman filmmaker. Forced into marriage at age 11, she pursued an edu­cation while working at the local TV station. At 16, she earned a scholarship to study filmmaking in the United States. She has made more than 20 docu­mentaries for French and Yemeni TV and received awards at film festivals worldwide. With her hus­band, she wrote The Tears of Sheba, about growing up in Yemen. She works at the Embassy of Yemen in Paris and is currently in development on the feature film I Am Nujood, 10 Years Old and Divorced, which is adapted from Nujood Ali’s novel and inspired by a true story. The project received funding from a SANAD grant this year.

Hani Al Shaibani

Hani Al Shaibani was born in Dubai. He received his Bachelor’s degree in radio and television at Cairo University and a Master of Arts in film and TV from Griffith University in Australia. As a filmmaker, AlShaibani wants to help showcase the Emirati film in­dustry worldwide in the best possible way. He won several awards for his short film Jawhara (2003), including an Emirates Film Competition award and Best Short Film from the Carthage Film Festival. His short film Young Sadness also won an Emirates award, and his feature film The Hotel was awardedat the 2009 Festival. He has participated in film fes­tivals all over the world, including Montreal, Rotter­dam, Edinburgh and Paris.

Dr. Gulnara Abikeyeva

Dr. Gulnara Abikeyeva is a film critic and artistic director of the International Film Festival Eurasia in Almaty, Kazakhstan. She is the former editor-in-chief of the film magazines Asia-kino and Territoriya Kino, has made TV programs about cinema, and taught film theory at the Kazakh Academy of the Arts. She was a Fulbright scholar in the United States at Bowdoin College and the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of five books on the cinema of Ka­zakhstan and Central Asia, including New Kazakh Cinema (1998), Central Asian Cin­ema: 1990–2001 (2001) and Nation-Build­ing in Kazakhstan and other Central Asian States, and How This Process is Reflected in Cinematography.

Jocelyne Saab

Jocelyne Saab was born in Lebanon in 1948. The civil war there threw her onto the front line as a war reporter. In 1982, her cov­erage of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon won her many prizes for Beirut My City. In 1985, Suspended Life, her first feature film, shot in Beirut during the civil war, was selected by Cannes, and her feature film Dunia – Kiss Me Not on the Eyes (2004) was selected for competition at Sundance. She is currently developing her next feature documentary, Woman in Mediterranean Sea, with funding from ADFF’s SANAD fund.

Fatemeh Simin Motamed-Arya

Fatemeh Simin Motamed-Arya began her career in theater in her teen years and has become the most celebrated actress in the history of Iranian cinema. She has performed in more than 50 films, stage plays and television series, and has made documentaries about ex-Iranian president Mohammed Khatami, and women who love cinema. She is also a professor of cinema and theater in Isfahan, and has been cho­sen as the ambassador of charity organiza­tions. A multi-award-winning actress, she won her last prize at the 2011 World Film Festival in Montreal for Here Without Me!.

Festivals offer an exciting opportunity to become acquainted with world cinema. As film critics, it is our interest and pleasure to support national cinema in all its forms and diversity, considering it an impor­tant part of national culture and identity.

We do this by writing on cinema, in newspapers or specialized magazines, on radio and television or the Internet. And we do it by awarding the best of them the “Prize of the International Critics” (FIPRESCI Prize). This prize is established at international film festivals, and its aim is to promote film art and to particularly encourage new and young cinema.

FIPRESCI, the International Federation of Film Critics, has been in existence for more than 70 years. The basic purpose of the organization, which now has members in more than 60 countries all over the world, is to support cinema as an art and as an outstanding and autonomous means of expres­sion. FIPRESCI also organizes conferences and seminars. We are cooperating with the European Film Academy (FIPRESCI Prize for a first film) and present our own Best Film of the Year. We’re involved in initiatives such as the Berlinale Talent Campus, to train young critics.

On the map of our cinema activities, one region is underrepresented if not missing: Arab cinema. We see the films invited by the major festivals. We guess and know that there’s much more worthy of be­ing discovered. Therefore, we welcome the offer to come with a jury to Abu Dhabi, where our jury col­leagues will focus on Arab films in the Narrative and Documentary Feature Competitions and the New Horizons / Afaq Jadida Competition.

The Festival offers also a welcome opportunity to meet our colleagues, critics from Arab countries. We miss them in our organization.

Klaus Eder

FIPRESCI, General Secretary

www.fipresci.org

FIPRESCI jurors at ADFF:

Gyôrgy Báron, Hungary
Adnan Madanat, Jordan
Andrea Martini, Italy
Mohamed El Rouby, Egypt
Abdel Sataar Naji, Kuwait.