Annemarie Jacir

She has been working in independent cinema since 1998 and has written, directed and produced a number of award-winning films including Until When, A Few Crumbs for the Birds, and a Post Oslo History. She was named one of Filmmaker magazine's 25 New Faces of Independent Cinema. Her short film, like twenty impossibles was the first Arab short film to ever be an official selection of the Cannes International Film Festival and went on to be a Student Academy Awards Finalist, winning more than 15 awards at International festivals including Best Film at the Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films, Chicago International Film Festival, Institute Du Monde Arabe Biennale, Mannheim-Heidelberg Film Festival, and IFP/New York. like twenty impossibles was named one of the ten best films of 2003 by Gavin Smith of Film Comment Magazine (Editors Choice) is a fiction film which wryly questions artistic responsibility as a Palestinian film crew navigates various obstacles of the Israeli military occupation. In 2018, she returned to the Cannes Film Festival, this time joining the Un Certain Regard Jury, presided by Puerto Rican/American actor Benicio del Toro.

In 2007, Jacir shot the first feature film by a Palestinian woman director, Salt of this Sea, the story of an American woman whose parents were Palestinian refugees, making her first visit to her family's homeland.[2] The film, released in 2008, was Palestine's submission to the 81st Academy Awards for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film[3] and received many other awards and nominations including winning the Muhr Arab Award for Best Screenplay at the Dubai International Film Festival,[4] a Cinema in Motion award at the 55th San Sebastian International Film Festival [5] and a FIPRESCI award.[6]

Jacir's poetry and stories have been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Mizna, the Crab Orchard Review, and The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology and she has read with poet Amiri Baraka. She has won several screenwriting awards and was a finalist for the Grand Prix du Meilleur Scenariste in Paris.[7]

She is chief curator and founder of the groundbreaking Dreams of a Nation Palestinian cinema project, dedicated to the promotion of Palestinian cinema.[8] In 2003, she organized and curated the largest traveling film festival in Palestine, which included the screening of archival Palestinian films from Revolution Cinema, screening for the first time on Palestinian soil. She has taught courses at Columbia University, Bethlehem University, Birzeit University and in refugee camps in Palestine and Lebanon. She works as a freelance editor and cinematographer as well as film curator. Jacir is a board member of Alwan for the Arts, a cultural organization devoted to North African and Middle Eastern art. She is a founding member of the Palestinian Filmmakers’ Collective, based in Palestine.