Nada Riyadh is a filmmaker based in Cairo, Egypt. She started her career in 2008 as an editor. Since then she has also worked as a producer and director in several fiction and documentary films. Her short film "Virtual", produced by MIF (Youssef Chahine and co.) in 2014, was screened in various international festivals and venues in Africa, Asia and Europe as well here last Documentary "Happily ever after" after the international premier in IDFA 2016. Nada has also worked since 2011, as a cultural manger curating and implementing cross-disciplinary art programs.

Mohamed Messahel, founder of the Comedy Film Festival in Morocco, 2007, 2008 and 2009. Artistic director of the Cinema and Sea Forum in Morocco, 2011. Participated in a the writing workshop in Agadir International Documentary Film Festival "Fidadoc", as well as in a number of electronic workshops on documentary film.

Farah Kassem is is a Lebanese filmmaker, has a master’s degree in documentary filmmaking, within the DocNomads program, a mobile Film School in Documentary Directing in Lisbon, Budapest and Brussels. Farah worked as a director, editor and D.O.P on several documentaries. Her shorts documentaries inclouds; My Father Looks Like Abdel Nasser get the “Special Mention” Award at the Dubai Int'l Film Festival 2012, You Make a Better Window Than You Do a Door has premiered at Visions du Réel International Festival in the official competition section and Nettoyer Schaerbeek, has premiered at Ayam Beirut Film Festival and been selected in official competition at Warsaw Film Festival, DOK Leipzig and Filmer a tout prix.

Ayman El Amir is an Egyptian filmmaker and academic. Originally a doctor, El Amir got an MFA degree in filmmaking with double majors in both film production and screenwriting from the Red Sea Institute for Cinematic Arts in Jordan in 2013. His filmography includes writing, directing and producing fiction and documentary films. In addition, he has worked for the last three years as a lecturer of Screenwriting and Film Production in couple of universities in the Middle East. In 2015, El Amir returned to Egypt to work as independent producer, while working as a script reader and editor for Torino Film Lab and Doha Film Institute grants program.

Amr Bayoumi holds a Bachelor of Art Film Direction from Higher Cinema Institute in Cairo, Egypt. Amr has worked as a freelance Researcher, Script Writer and Film Director in many documentaries, as well as directed feature-length films such as Girls (Balad El Banat) 2007 and  The Bridge (Al Jesr) 1999.

Having graduated in Creative Documentary Making at the Arabic Institute of Film (AIF) in Amman, Jordan, Hazem has directed various short films like "Bird of Stone", "The Right Side of that Road", and "Moaning" which won the Dubai Cultural Innovation Award 2010-2011. His first feature film "From my Syrian Room" (2014) was screened at many film festivals including Dubai international film festival 2014, Yamagata international film festival 2015, Japan, and won the second prize of "The One World Film Prize" of the German state of North Rhine-Palatinate.

Intissar Jbeiha is a Moroccan film producer, working in project management and holds a Master Degree of La Sorbonne in Cinema Studies and over seven years of varied professional experience in the cultural sector (television, radio, and cinema).Intissar works in team management, planning, logistics, budget management and artistic coaching, combining organisational skills and creativity.

Hanan Abdalla is a British-Egyptian freelance documentary filmmaker. “The Vote” is her second feature-length documentary. Her first film “In The Shadow Of A Man”, an intimate portrait of women, sex, marriage, and resistance in Egypt, premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival 2012. After screening at over 20 festivals around the world, it won Hanan the award for Best Documentary Filmmaker at Doha Tribeca Film Festival. Born in 1988, Hanan graduated from Oxford University where she studied Politics & Philosophy. A third generation of a family of Egyptian political activists, Hanan grew up in London and lives in Cairo.

Cressida Trew is a freelance documentary filmmaker based between Cairo and London. Cressida won an Emmy Award for her work in cinematography on the Oscar Nominated THE SQUARE, Jehane Noujaim's feature-length documentary, in which she was also an Associate Producer . She studied English Literature at Cambridge University and performance at École Philippe Gaulier in Paris, learning documentary filmmaking at the DFG in London. She frequently works with the revolutionary media collective Mosireen in Cairo and is currently working on a feature- length documentary "The Vote".

Zeina is a documentary filmmaker, film distributor and publicist, co-founder of MC Distribution – Lebanon as well as founding member of the cultural association of Cinema Metropolis. So far, she has directed 12 documentaries and is currently in the writing phase of her new feature documentary. Having been a member in the cultural association Beirut DC, Zeina has been the artistic director of Beirut DC’s Arab Film Festival “Beirut Cinema Days”. Since 2007, she has been Programmer and Arab Communication and Film Talent Manager at the Dubai International Film Festival.

Juma is documentary filmmaker, born in Kobani, northern Syria in 1984. He graduated from the University of Damascus with a BA in Media studies. Since 2008, Juma has been working as a freelance director and researcher in the documentary filmmaking field. Currently, Juma is working on his mid-length documentary "Rude Refugee Diaries" .

Wael Kadlo is a Syrian filmmaker who was born in Damascus, Syria in 1980. He graduated with a degree in French literature from the University of Damascus in 2007. Kadlo started his career as a theater actor during his university years as well as taking part in a number of independent plays. Following that, he participated in a number of workshops in directing, editing, and cinematography. Meanwhile, Kadlo has been working continuously on his own films, the latest of which is “The Way Home”.

Ahmad is a screenwriter, filmmaker, and human rights activist. He holds a degree in screenwriting from the Cairo Film Institute (2009), and a degree in History from Suez Canal University (2003). He contributed in many documentary films as a researcher and co-writer, and worked as an AD in various films, TV shows and sitcoms. He volunteered in many activities of Human Rights groups in Egypt, calling for a better life for children and labourers in Egypt. In 2006 he directed his experimental short "Mocha". His documentary feature "Living Skin" 2010, was awarded at Abu Dhabi IFF and selected in more than 20 festivals including Hot Docs Toronto, Amiens IFF, Dok.fest Munich.

Khaid Shamis is a documentarian specialising in long-form independent film editing. He runs his production company tubafilms from Cape Town, South Africa and has held an associate lectureship position at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. His feature-length documentary, Imam and I, was received to critical acclaim.

Rafik Omrani is a director and film editor who resides in Tunisia. Omrani has produced a number of documentaries for television and for the benefit of many Tunisian and international organisations. ‘Fallega 2011’ (2011), his first medium-length documentary film, was shown at numerous international festivals. ‘White Doves’, his first feature-length documentary, was produced in 2016.

Usama is a Syrian filmmaker, video activist, and translator based in Berlin. So far, he has directed two documentaries, among them the mid-length documentary "Black Stones" which was premiered at IDFA 2017 after he got MENA Residency grant from DOX BOX for spring cycle of 2016. Usama continues to work as a freelance translator.. In September 2017 he joined DOX BOX for a four month internship through a collaboration with the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations.

Mostafa Nour is an editor from Egypt Based in Cairo, started his career in 2010 as an assistant editor in featured documentary “The roots of sedition” for Al Jazeera Documentary channel he cut his first Documentary in 2013 “Caricature School”. His filmography includes cinematography, Editing fiction and documentary films and commercials. He recently co-edit a documentary film Fish killed Twice with director Fawzi Saleh- and the fiction film "Bahaia" by Marwan Hamed.

Mohamed Siam is a director, producer, and cinematographer who has received various international grants and prizes in support of his films, among others from Sundance Institute, IDFA Bertha Fund, Arab Fund for Arts & Culture. His first film “Whose Country” was screened in several international festivals. Siam is an alumnus of many prestigious film institutions such as Sundance Labs, IDFA Academy, Doc Campus, La Fabrique des Cinémas du Monde at Cannes Film Festival. His documentary “Amal” won the Robert Bosch Film Prize, the AfriDocs Prize at Durban FilmMart, and Thessaloniki Docs-In-Progress award. The film is nominated for the feature-length documentary competition and was the opening film at IDFA 2017.

Amany is a scriptwriter, translator, copywriter, and researcher. She does content writing in Arabic and English and has been working as a scriptwriter for various media production houses in numerous documentaries screened on Aljazeera, Aljazeera English, and Aljazeera Documentary. She was the scriptwriter for a number of media campaigns including Mada Foundation for women’s rights, UNICEF, and the Egyptian National Council of Population. Amany has directed three short movies and is currently working on her first documentary feature.

Doaa Fathy holds a Bachelor of Art in Film Editing from the Higher Cinema Institute in Cairo, Egypt, where she currently teaches film editing. She has worked as an independent film editor on various films such as Balad El Banat (Girls) 2007.

Laurent Lombart lives and works both in France and Morocco. He studied cinema and art at university. At the same time, he practiced photography and produced many short films and essays. In 2011, he directed "Lambeaux", his first short fiction film and started collaborating with other filmmakers as an editor, especially for documentary films. In 2016, he was grantee of the  MENA Residency from DOX BOX with the Moroccan director and producer Rachid Biyi for the film "Bread and Angels".

Rua Osman is a Khartoum based film producer and documentary researcher. In combining the lenses of art and her natural science background, Rua sees documentary as a strongly affected beautiful tool to create a meaningful reality. She has worked on various films, including the award-winning Sudanese film “You Will Die At Twenty”.

Mayye Zayed An Egyptian filmmaker and a co-founder of Rufy's Films; an independent production company and a collective of 5 filmmakers in Alexandria. She is a Fulbright scholar who studied cinema and media studies in Wellesley College & MIT in USA. Mayye is also an alumna of Film Independent, Berlinale Talents, Documentary Campus Masterschool, DOX BOX and the American Film Showcase documentary program in USC School of Cinematic Arts. In 2013 she made her first feature "The Mice Room" and in 2016 she made the award winning short "A Stroll Down Sunflower Lane" premiered at Berlinale 2016.

Rim Harabbi was born 1994 in Sousse, Tunisia. She is a freelance editor, videographer and director of documentaries for independent cultural media including experimental music videos and mapping. She currently works as a communications agent for Hakka Distribution in Tunisia.

Dina Naser is a Jordanian director, writer, and producer with Palestinian roots, Dina holds a BA in Art and Graphic Design and she was granted the scholarship for DOCNOMADS Mobile Documentary School for a two-year MA programme in Lisbon, Budapest, and Brussels. She worked through a variety of television and film productions. Her filmography includes; Shamieh, 2011, One Minute, 2015 and she co-directed Sea Wash, 2016 which is a short experimental film. Tiny Souls, will be her first feature length Documentary.

Zaher Omareen is a Syrian filmmaker and researcher, studied media, journalism and theatrical and dramatic arts in Damascus, and holds a MA in Media and Cultural Studies from Sussex University and PhD in contemporary documentary cinema and new media at Goldsmiths College, London. Zaher is co-editor of Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline (Saqi Books, 2014), He co-founded the Syria's’ Mobile Phone Film Festival.

Erige is a journalist and a documentary filmmaker. She holds a bachelor degree in Business administration and a certificate of documentary filmmaking. She has worked as a producer and director of investigative documentaries at « inkyfada » web magazine.

Rachid Biyi is a Moroccan director, scenarist, animator and professor. He holds a PhD in Communication, Art and Spectacle, from Bordeaux III, France. He teaches in the Audiovisual Studies program at Ben M’sik Faculty of Arts and Humanities, in Casablanca, Morocco. He is the Producer Manager of the documentary “Camera/Women,” directed by Karima Zoubir and nominated for an IDFA Mid-length competition award. He also co-produced “Le Tableau,” (The Painting) a documentary film by Brahim Fritah, “Une Place au Soleil” (A place for the Sun), a short fiction by Rachid Boutounès, and “Le Grand Voyage” (The Big Trip), a feature length fiction film by Ismael Ferroukhi. He participated in writing residencies, namely inDocmed (2011), and presented his documentary project “Du Pain et des Anges” (Bread & Angels) in DurbanFilmMart, in July 2012. He also participated in IDFAcademy in November 2012. Laureate de AFAC, 2012, SCAM, 2013 and DOX BOX, 2016.

Amer is a filmmaker, journalist and human rights activist. He studied journalism in Damascus and co-founded the organization Al-Schari (The Street), which fought for freedom of the press and its development. He made some short documentary films including Azadi (2011) which won distinctions at the Rotterdam Film Festival. As co-director, Amer Matar was involved in the making of the documentary Smuggling 23 Minutes of Revolution (2011). He was a fellow at the PEN Writers in Exile fellowship. Amer also runs the Syria Mobile film festival and writes poetry including Texte aus dem Exil (Foreign Homeland. Texts from Exile, 2013).

Hend is an Egyptian filmmaker and a co‐founder of Rufy’s Films, an independent film production house based in Alexandria. Born in Alexandria in 1980, she studied Arabic at the Faculty of Islamic and Arab Studies and graduated from El Azhar University in 2003. She studied filmmaking in the Jesuits filmmaking workshop in 2009/2010. In 2013 she made the collaborative feature “The Mice Room”, with other 5 filmmakers. The film was officially selected in international film festivals like Dubai, Sao Paulo, Tetouan and many others. Hend is currently working on her first feature documentary “The Tedious Tour of M.”

After studying cinema in Paris, she began for ten years a double career as a film technician on several international projects and as an organizer for film festivals (Cannes, Cairo, Biennial of Arab films in Paris, etc.) She started her direction career in 2009 with two short movies. In 2011, she co-directed with French-Egyptian-Columbian filmmaker Farid Ismail, a documentary on the Egyptian revolution "18 days in the heart of the Egyptian revolution" of 26', selected in many festivals and broadcasted on TV5 Africa. In the same year, she made a clip to support Egyptians based abroad to acquire the right to vote. In 2012, she began a new collaboration with Egyptian photographer and filmmaker, Mahmoud Afify. Numerous documentary projects for L'Oréal, Rai uno, Al monitor and promos and films emerged from this collaboration including a short environmental documentary filmed in Morocco: "Drinking Fog", short-listed by the Sundance Film Institute. They are developing the long version of this project as well as a short fiction film. In 2020, she directed and produced a web series and a short fiction. She is currently developing her first feature film (Franco-Indian).

Albaqer Jafeer is an Iraqi director who studied filmmaking at the Iraqi Independent Film Center in 2009. Later on, Jafeer participated in filmmaking workshops inside and outside Baghdad where he studied screenwriting, directing, editing and production management. Albaqar Jafeer’s filmography includes the short documentary film Rafa’t Alam (Rising the Flag) and Ghorbat Ghajar (Strangeness of the Gypsies) and the experimental film 50mm Lens. The Band is Jafeer’s debut feature documentary film.

Salim Abu Jabal has worked as a journalist and film critic in various newspapers, and as a producer and director in various productions in TV and cinema. In 2005, Salim founded the travelling film festival ‘Films from behind the wall’ that specialized in Palestinian cinema from the West Bank and Gaza. In 2013, he founded a Cinema Club dedicated to the dissemination of art house and independent cinema in Haifa, Ramallah, Gaza, Bethlehem, and Jenin. His first feature documentary 'Roshmia' (2015) won 13 awards around the world, among them the “Special Jury Prize” at Dubai Int’l Film Festival, “Best Documentary, Open Eyes Award” at MedFilm Festival Rome, “Special Jury Prize” at Algeria International Cinema Festival.

YOSRA EL-GAZZAR is a visual artist and storyteller based in Cairo, Egypt. Her work merges the expressive qualities of art with the communicative power of design, to visually investigate, question, and narrate the socio-political and geo-political realities of the region. She has been the lead designer with Visualising Palastine since 2016. Her work has been exhibited in various international venues.

Sarah Lamrini is a Moroccan producer working between Casablanca and Paris. After business studies and experiences in film production in France, she studied at the School of visual arts of Marrakech. She produced several documentaries for national television, and the award winning documentary feature "Aji-Bi, Under the Clock Tower", directed by Raja Saddiki. She worked as the production manager of the feature film "Volubilis" by Faouzi Bensaïdi, and is currently developing various documentary and fiction projects by Arab directors.

Najwa Khecheimi holds a degree in editing. she has worked as an editor on films such as "El Gourt" by Hamza Ouni and "Sfax"by Lassad Hajji

Lana Daher is a filmmaker living in Beirut. She is currently in development and early production of her first feature documentary ‘Do You Love Me’ which she is directing and co-producing. It is a recipient of the 2019 film prize of the Robert Bosch Stiftung and was granted development funding by the IDFA Bertha Fund as well as the Doha Film Institute. With the project, Lana participated in 2019 at dokfest Munich, RIDM Talent Lab, IDFAcademy and in 2020 at the 4th edition of Cinephilia Cannes Bound as well as the IDFA Project Space. She holds a BFA in Graphic Design from the American University of Beirut and an MA in Filmmaking from Goldsmiths College, University of London. Lana has both shot and directed commissioned documentaries about independent Lebanese designers and their relationship to their work as well as music videos and short films.

Born and raised in Morocco, Yasmine lived in New York for four years studying film and mathematics at Columbia University. In 2016, she directed her first documentary short film: “The Travel Curiosity”, on her father’s love for travelling. She then moved to Paris to attend the Experimental Programme in Political Arts at Sciences Po (SPEAP). After making her short “Observational” on images of surveillance, she directed “Ojalá: la vuelta al origen”, a feature documentary on the dance of the Palestinian diaspora of Santiago, Chile. As a complement to the film, she has developed “Its people, its sky, its scent”, a video installation on finding Chile in Palestine. She is currently working on other projects: “Moussem Trans(e)”, a documentary feature on a Moroccan pilgrimage between religion, sorcery, and trans identities, and “Chebba”, a fiction short about a family and an evil eye-protective ritual. She is also one of the three artists that make up the MYST collective currently working on borders in contemporary conflicts. Through her filmmaking and visual art practice, she has explored stories around memory, surveillance, identity, dance, heritage, diaspora, borders, archive, and rituals. The subtleties of language are also a big part of her work: she speaks Arabic, English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. Her films and installations were shown in France, Egypt, the US, and Palestine, in addition to residencies in Morocco, France, Palestine, and Tunisia.

Salimata Ousman BÂ is born in Nouakchott in 1993, is a trained Sociologist with a Master’s degree from the University of Saint-Louis, Senegal. She works as marketing manager and gender referent for the NGO GRET and coordinates the Djibril Zakaria club for the promotion of Mauritanian literature. In 2017 she developed her first documentary project “Les étoiles scintillantes voilées” in a writing residency in Mauritania.

Having graduated in fine arts, Ahmed studied filmmaking under Islam El Azzazi in the Jesuits Cultural Center of Alexandria. He produced his first documentary “The Trip” in 2009 and has since then joined a number of workshops with acclaimed filmmakers and artists . Since 2011, he has been dedicating the majority of his creative time to study and work with documentaries, either as a researcher or a filmmaker. His short documentary "17 Fouad Street" won four prizes in Egypt and Spain. His first feature documentary "The City Will Pursue You" premiered in the 19th Ismailia International Film Festival long documentary competition in 2017.

Haafedh has a degree in video editing from the National School Of Art and Multimedia in Manouba, Tunisia  and has worked as a co editor on films such as Hedi, La Vois Normal, Weldi 2018 as well some short films, L'oiseau bleu (Tunisia film factory 2018), Astra 2017