JURY OF THE OFFICIAL SHORT FILM COMPETITION
PRESIDENT OF THE JURY
Abdeslam Kelai
Abdeslam Kelai is a Moroccan director, screenwriter, and producer, born in 1969 in Larache. 2003 was the year that saw the beginning of his career with the release of his first short film Happy Day. He has directed several feature films for television, including Majda in 2004, Men and the Sea, Black Waters, and in 2009, The Lady of the Dawn with which he won the award for best TV film at the Television Festival of Amman in Jordan. Then, Love and Anger and The Silence of Memory received the Grand Prize at the Television Festival of Meknes. He also shot the series Aïn Al Haq which was a huge success and was very well received by the critics. For the cinema, Abdeslam Kelai directed the short films Un formidable voyage, À Ton Chevet, and Le Recrutement before shooting his first feature film Malak which was released in 2012 and won numerous awards in Morocco and internationally. Goldfishes – Poissons rouges is his second feature film released in early 2021.
MEMBER OF THE JURY
MIRVET KAMMOUN
Graduate of the Higher Institute of Fine Arts of Tunis. Doctor of Arts and Sciences (Paris Sorbonne), director, writer, and university professor. She has given numerous conferences in Tunisia, France and the United States of America. She has published several specialized critical studies in Tunisia, Morocco and France. In 2010, her book Youssef Chahine, The camera of all battles, was published. In 2014, she signed her first featured short film, awarded at the Mumbai International Film Festival. In 2017, she released the short film The Thorn Wedding, which participated in several international festivals, including the 2018 Aswan International Women’s Film Festival, the Geneva International Oriental Film Festival and the FMC Festival. It won the Grand Jury Prize for the short film Burundi 2018. In 2021, she presented the film Life, which participated in many festivals such as the Malmö Film Festival and the Carthage Film Days 2021. She received the Audience Award at the Geneva International Oriental Film Festival 2021, and the Best Film Award at the Taza Festival in Morocco in 2022. She is currently writing her first feature film.
MEMBER OF THE JURY
Rosh ABDELFATAH
Rosh Abdelfatah is a Syrian Producer and Director residing in the Netherlands. He graduated from the Art Academy of Cinema, Department of Sound and Image Engineering in 2006.
He is the Artistic Director of the Rotterdam Arab Film Festival and Founder of the CMENA online platform for Arab cinema in the Netherlands and Europe CMENA.nl.
He has been a member of the association Dutch Filmmakers since 2007. He has produced film projects and television documentaries in the Netherlands and abroad.
He completed a video installation and participated in exhibitions in several countries, including Holland, China, Russia, Bosnia, Germany, and Belgium
He studied oral history from 2014-2015 and completed an oral history project documenting 350 Live stories of immigrants in the Netherlands. This project was archived in the Dutch National Museum