Annemarie Jacir

Jacir has been working in independent cinema since 1998 and has written, directed and produced a number of award-winning films. Two of her films have premiered as Official Selections in Cannes, one in Berlin and in Venice, Locarno, Rotterdam, Toronto, and Telluride. All three of her feature films were selected as Palestine's Oscar Entry for Foreign Language Film. 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.

In 2007, Jacir shot the first feature film by a Palestinian woman director, Salt of this Sea, the story of a working-class American woman whose parents were Palestinian refugees, making her first return to her family's homeland.[1]

Her second work to debut in Cannes Film Festival, Salt of this Sea, went on to win the FIPRESCI Critics Award, and garnered fourteen other international awards including Best Film in Milan. The film was Palestine's submission to the 81st Academy Awards for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.[2] It also received many other awards and nominations, including winning the Muhr Arab Award for Best Screenplay at the Dubai International Film Festival,[3] a Cinema in Motion award at the 55th San Sebastian International Film Festival[4] and a FIPRESCI award.[5] Salt of this Sea starred poet Suheir Hammad alongside Saleh Bakri in his first role on screen.

Her second feature, When I Saw You, won Best Asian Film at the Berlinale, Best Arab Film in Abu Dhabi and Best Film in Amiens, Phoenix, and Olympia, and garnered a nomination at the Asian Pacific Screen Awards. Working in both fiction and documentary, other films include Until When, A Few Crumbs for the Birds, which she also shot as cinematographer, and experimentala Post Oslo History.

In 2011, Chinese director Zhang Yimou selected her to be his first protégée as part of the Rolex Arts Initiative. With a commitment to teaching, training and hiring locally, Jacir also curates, actively promoting independent cinema in the region. Founder of Philistine Films, she collaborates regularly as an editor, screenwriter and occasional producer with fellow filmmakers. She teaches screenwriting and works as a freelance editor and consultant. Her 2017 film Wajib won 36 international awards, including Best Film in Mar Del Plata, Dubai, Amiens, DC Film Festival, and Kerala, and a jury mention at the London Film Festival.

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. 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.[6]

She is chief curator and founder of the "Dreams of a Nation" Palestinian cinema project, dedicated to the promotion of Palestinian cinema.[7]

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.