2019

Omar Shargawi is a Danish-Palestinian self-taught director who also worked as still-photographer. His directorial feature film debut, GO WITH PEACE JAMIL (2008), received generous awards including the VPRO Tiger Award in Rotterdam, the Church Prize and FIPRESCI Award in Göteborg, and Best Director in Transylvania. His next project, MY FATHER FROM HAIFA (2009), took home two awards at the Dubai International Film Festival.

Lina Al Abed is a Palestinian filmmaker who graduated from the Faculty of Journalism at Damascus University. Her thesis project was a short documentary about Syrian author Mohamed Al-Maghout that was broadcast on Al Jazeera in 2007. She went on to direct short documentaries, namely NOOR ALHUDA, which received the DOXBOX Jury Prize for Best Syrian Documentary Film in 2010, and A DREAM OF POWERFUL MONSTERS (2013). Her first feature documentary, DAMASCUS, MY FIRST KISS (2012) premiered at Doc Leipzig and was broadcast on ARTE.

Alia Yunis, born in Chicago, is a Palestinian American writer and filmmaker who has worked across all media on projects around the globe. She has produced several short films, and co-directed MAN HUNT in 2004, which became a Valentine's Day Special in the Oxygen Channel in the USA. THE GOLDEN HARVEST is her first film as a solo director. It won Best of the Fest at the 2019 Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival and got Official Selection at the 2019 Thessaloniki International Film Festival.

Mathijs Poppe (born in 1990 in Ghent, Belgium) studied at the Youth Initiative Program in Sweden and at the School of Arts in Ghent (KASK). He is also co-founder of Classroom Alive: A 6-month walking school across Europe. The documentaries Mathijs has directed mostly revolved around the relationship between himself and the film’s subjects/characters/actors.

Michael Rowley is an emerging documentary filmmaker from Dallas, Texas who aims to document underrepresented stories in an effort to bring awareness, equity and justice to an interconnected and global society. Michael’s documentary feature directorial debut, HURDLE (2019) was the recipient of  the Austin Film Society’s North Texas Pioneer Film Grant and a winner of the American Documentary Film Festival Pitch Competition.