Born in Beirut, Ali Cherri is a filmmaker and visual artist living and working in Paris. In 2022, he was awarded the Silver Lion for his participation in the International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, The Milk of Dreams. Among his solo exhibitions are Envisagement at the Giacometti Foundation, Paris (2024), Dreamless Night/Le Songe d’une nuit sans rêve at Frac Bretagne in 2024 and GAMeC, Bergamo in 2023, Humble and quiet and soothing as mud at the Swiss Institute New York (2023), Ceux qui nous regardent at CAC La Traverse (2023), and If you prick us, do we not bleed? at the National Gallery in London (2022).

Younes Ben Slimane is a Tunisian artist and filmmaker. His architectural background has a major influence on his approach as an artist. Working through film, video, photography, drawing and installation, he establishes a permanent dialogue between architecture and visual arts, where different mediums coexist and reflect each other’s potentialities and limitations. Ben Slimane completed his post-graduate studies at Le Fresnoy – Studio National des Arts Contemporains (FR). His films have been selected in international festivals such as Locarno Film Festival (CH) and CPH:DOX (DK). His work has been exhibited at the Mucem in Marseille (FR), Solar -Galeria de Arte Cinemática in Vila do conde (PRT) and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje (MK). This year, he will be participating at Dakar Biennale of Contemporary African Art, Dakar, Senegal.

Rana Nazzal Hamadeh is a Palestinian artist based on unceded Anishinaabe Algonquin land. Her photography, film, and installation works look at issues related to time, space, memory, and movement, offering interventions rooted in a decolonial framework. Rana holds an MFA in Documentary Media from Toronto Metropolitan University and finds herself between Ramallah and Ottawa.

Hiwa K was born in Kurdistan-Northern Iraq in 1975. His informal studies in his hometown Sulaymaniyah were focused on European literature and philosophy, learnt from available books translated into Arabic. After moving to Europe in 2002, Hiwa K studied music as a pupil of the Flamenco master Paco Peña in Rotterdam, and subsequently settled in Germany. His works escape normative aesthetics but give a possibility of another vibration to vernacular forms, oral histories, modes of encounter and political situations. The repository of his references consists of stories told by family members and friends, found situations as well as everyday forms that are the products of pragmatics and necessity. He continuously critiques the art education system and the professionalization of art practice, as well as the myth of the individual artist. Many of his works have a strong collective and participatory dimension, and express the concept of obtaining knowledge from everyday experience rather than doctrine.

Nadia Shihab is a filmmaker and artist working in the realm of creative nonfiction. Her projects emerge through processes that are relational and improvisational, and have taken the form of films, sound works, visual art and writing. Her work has been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou, Berkeley Art Museum, Sursock Museum, Walker Art Center, Black Star Film Festival, Images Festival, and Cairo International Film Festival. Her creative practice is preceded by over a decade of work as a community practitioner. She was raised in Texas by immigrant parents from Iraq and Yemen and is currently an Assistant Professor in Film in the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University.

Nour Ouayda is a filmmaker and film programmer. Her films experiment with various forms of fiction making in cinema. She is a member of The Camelia Committee with Carine Doumit and Mira Adoumier and part of the editorial committee of the Montreal-based online film journal Hors Champ. Between 2018 and 2023, she was the partnerships coordinator then deputy director at Metropolis Cinema Association in Beirut where she managed and developed the Cinematheque Beirut project. She also teaches film programming in Beirut.

Born in East Jerusalem, Larissa Sansour (PS/DK) studied Fine Art in Copenhagen, London and New York. She represented Denmark at the 58th Venice Biennale. Recent solo exhibitions include Whitworth Gallery in Manchester, KINDL in Berlin, Copenhagen Contemporary in Denmark and Dar El-Nimer in Beirut.

Fatine-Violette Sabiri (1994, Casablanca, MAR) is a multi-disciplinary artist who uses photographic, tactile and traditional craft mediums. Her practice employs intuition toward examining personal narratives from encounters with people and objects in her immediate surroundings. Sabiri’s photographs take multiple forms, existing as a hybrid of editorial fashion work, commissioned portraits and personal documentary images. The resulting body of work emerges through an equilibrium of autobiography and storytelling. Throughout the varied disciplines and approaches in her work, she cultivates the importance of intuition, adaptation and humor.

Oumayma Ben Tanfous is an internationally published photographer and director. Her artistic practice spans documentary and fashion projects, and her contemplative photography seeks to involve viewers in the emotional life of her subjects, personalizing individuals who might otherwise be considered strangers. She recently embarked on a more autobiographical photobook, slated to be published in 2025, which explores the intimate and complex ties that draw her to Tunisia, her homeland.

Roï Saade is an interdisciplinary artist interested in the intersectionality between graphic design, photography, and the arts.
He is interested in finding and creating ways to resist systems of domination and inequality. Through photography, Roi investigates collective memory, both past and present. By documenting personal encounters and the social fabric of the community, Roi aims to shed light on the shared experiences and histories that shape our understanding of the world. Saade designs and curates photography exhibitions, film festivals, magazines and specializes in book design, where he blends his passion for visual culture and explores the social and cultural meanings of images. Saade holds an MFA in Graphic Design from USEK University in Lebanon. He is currently a Research Associate and executive board member at Access in the Making research lab at Concordia University, Montreal.