Dear AFMI community, we are proud to share with you the Jury for the 28th Arab Film Festival, starting with Cherien Dabis, the Jury Chair.
The 28th Arab Film Festival opens on Thursday October 24th in San Francisco and will run through Sunday November 3rd in person in the San Francisco Bay Area and online. You can already browse the full schedule and buy your tickets. Passes are also available here.
Cherien Dabis – Jury Chair
Cherien Dabis hardly needs an introduction: she is a critically acclaimed and award winning Palestinian American film and television director, writer, and actor.
She made her feature film debut with Amreeka, which she wrote and directed in 2009; that same year she was named one of Variety magazine’s 10 Directors to Watch.
Amreeka premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and won the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize in the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes, along other international awards. It was also named one of the Top Ten Independent Films of the Year by the National Board of Review.
Cherien Dabis made history when Amreeka broke records in its theatrical release by becoming the most-screened Arab-directed film in US-cinema history.
Karim Ahmad
Karim Ahmad is a writer, producer, culture strategist, and founder & CEO of UTOPIA STUDIO, a narrative change studio dedicated to building just and beautiful futures through cross-platform cultural production. He is the writer of the speculative fiction graphic novel, DIVIDE, creator of the Muslim Futures anthology, founder of the Restoring the Future consultancy, and was the Creator and Showrunner of the groundbreaking science fiction series, FUTURESTATES. He is an Open Society Foundation Soros Equality Fellow, member of the Guild of Future Architects, and can be found on most social media platforms as @thatkarimahmad
Hadi Nicholas Deeb
Hadi Nicholas Deeb is Co-Executive Producer on FX’s limited series AMERICAN SPORTS STORY: AARON HERNANDEZ and the forthcoming second season of Netflix’s THE RECRUIT. His other screen credits include HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER (ABC), SEE (Apple), FBI (CBS), and BLINDSPOT (NBC). Hadi broke into the business through the Warner Bros. Television Writers’ Workshop. Before that, he attended Harvard for both undergrad and law school and practiced international financial law on Wall Street for five years. He went on to receive his PhD in Linguistic Anthropology from UCLA, and has studied French, Arabic, Spanish, and Armenian. The son of Lebanese immigrants, he is a classically trained pianist, ardent history buff, author of the climate fiction novel WATERSHED, devotee of his two golden retrievers, and obsessed with all things chocolate.
Sahar Jahani
Sahar Jahani is a first generation Iranian-American screenwriter raised in Los Angeles. She worked in scripted development at YouTube Originals before transitioning to the writers room on the Golden Globe winning Hulu series, RAMY. She won a Peabody, along with the other writers, for their work on the first season. Since then, Sahar has written on several acclaimed shows including, 13 REASONS WHY, THE BOLD TYPE, ECHOES, and was most recently a consulting producer on LIFE & BETH. On the film side, Sahar’s written movies for Pascal Pictures / Columbia and is currently adapting a YOU’VE GOT MAIL-inspired feature for Amazon Studios and Executive Producer, Mindy Kaling. Sahar has also developed her own series at HBO Max, Netflix and Amazon. In addition to all of her film and TV work, Sahar’s writing has been featured in The New York Times’ Modern Love column and she is currently writing her first novel for Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers / Macmillan publishing.
Nicholas Monsour
Nicholas Monsour is a film and television editor from Los Angeles. His work includes the films Nickel Boys, Nope, Next Goal Wins, Us and Keanu, and the television shows Key & Peele, The Twilight Zone, The Last O.G., Cobra Kai, Colin in Black & White, Jean Claude Van Johnson, Whiskey Cavalier, Brockmire, Comrade Detective, Drunk History, and HBO’s Witness. He was nominated for an Emmy for Key & Peele (2016). He has also worked extensively in non-profit media production and education.
Monsour received a BFA degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His films, video art, sculptures, installations, performance and theater pieces have been exhibited in multiple cities in the United States and abroad. The feature film he wrote and directed, Oh My Soul, was an official selection at the 2009 Rotterdam International Film Festival. He has also worked as a graphic designer, theatrical set designer and book designer.
Nicholas Monsour is the son of poet/author Leslie Monsour and playback engineer and documentary cinematographer Karem John Monsour. His brother Jesse Monsour is a creative director at the media production and visual effects company, A52.
Theresa Navarro
Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Theresa Navarro is a Pinay cultural worker and working mama whose career in media arts spans two decades. Prior to Catapult, she served as vice president of external affairs at American Documentary, the New York-based nonprofit behind Emmy Award-winning series ‘POV’ on PBS. An Independent Spirit Award-nominated producer, her credits include Chinatown sports documentary 9-Man (director Ursula Liang), Peabody Award-winning anthology series ‘America Reframed’ on WORLD Channel (supervising producer Carmen L. Vicencio), and sci-fi feminist feature Advantageous (director Jennifer Phang, producers Robert Chang, Jacqueline Kim, Ken Jeong, Moon Molson), which won the Special Prize for Collaborative Vision at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.
In addition to her work in film and media, Theresa contributes to public discourse on community, identity and power by and about marginalized folx as a writer, performer, and educator. She engages in field-wide conversations through community-based collectives including A-Doc, Brown Girls Doc Mafia, and Color Congress, and has participated on panels, workshops and juries at the Australian International Documentary Conference, Allied Media Conference, Hawaii International Film Festival, New Orleans Film Festival, and SXSW, among others. In 2011, Theresa was nationally recognized as one of 15 Asian Pacific American Women Leaders for her media arts work.
Mico Saad
Mico Saad is a versatile artist, TV host, personality, Golden Globes jury member, and award-winning actor and filmmaker. He is also a multilingual theater performer and professional dancer. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, Mico moved to London at 17, where he further pursued a career in the performing arts. He served as the entertainment manager and ambassador for performing arts events organized by the Egyptian Embassy in the UK.
Mico studied acting in both the UK and the U.S. and went on to host five seasons of his Arabic-language travel show “Gawlat Mico,” which showcased global destinations. He made history as the first Egyptian to host his show in major events such as the BAFTA Awards, Academy Awards, and Golden Globes.
After gaining recognition across the UK, Europe, and the Middle East, Mico relocated to Hollywood in October 2018. There, he became the lead host of “Ten Hollywood,” a documentary series on Ten TV, where he interviewed prominent actors and filmmakers like Nicolas Cage, Zac Efron, Eddie Redmayne, Adam Brody, Jonathan Pryce, Kristen Bell, Ron Howard, and others.
Mico continues to work between the UK and U.S., collaborating with legends such as Ricky Gervais and Sir Anthony Hopkins. He has also produced several short films in Hollywood, including “Al-Masry Life,” which earned him both a Best Actor Award and a Best Short Film Award at the Action on Film International Film Festival. Oscar-winning filmmaker Peter Farrelly described the film as “a gem.”
The 2024 Arab Film Festival Jury will choose the following awards:
- Best Narrative Feature
- Best Documentary Feature
- Best Debut Feature
- Ruya (Visionary) Award
- Best Narrative Short
- Best Documentary Short
Don’t miss the best of Arab Cinema!
Join us in the San Francisco Bay Area or online. Browse the full schedule and buy your tickets. Passes are also available here.
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