Birth: 1/1/1962 Death:NULL/NULL/NULL
Born in Al-Shati’ (Beach) Refugee Camp, Gaza Strip, in 1962; grew up in the camp; studied film-making in Israel; directed several documentaries about Palestine life under occupation, incl. Travel Document (1986) and Long Days in Gaza (1991); his first feature film Curfew (1993) won the UNESCO prize in Cannes in 1994 and the Antigone D’Or in the Mediterranean Cinema Festival in Montpellier; his second film, Haifa (1996) won many international prizes, incl. Best Arabic Film at the 1996 Cairo International Film Festival and was presented in Cannes; in 1996, he initiated the Cinema Production and Distribution Center in Ramallah, where he resides since; also founded Mobile Cinema, which shows films in refugee camps and organizes the annual “Kids Film Festival”; other works – mainly short films – include Rabab (1997), Waiting (1994), One Step and Another (1996), Tension (1998), A Love Season (2001), This is the Voice of Palestine (Live from Palestine) (2002), and Ticket to Jerusalem (2002), which won numerous awards at various film regional and international festivals, incl. the Special Jury Prize (Silver Pyramid), Cairo Film Festival, 2002, the Public Prize by Tribune de Genève, Cinema Tout Ecran-Geneva, 2002, Special Prize by Signis Jury, Amiens Film Festival, France, 2002, Love & Peace Award, MedFilm Festival in Rome, 2002, and The Grand Prix, Festival Cinéma Méditerranéen à Bruxelles, Belgium, 2002; his most recent films are Arafat my Brother (2005) and Waiting (2005).
