Johnny Dabeet is a seasoned filmmaker and the founder of Fluid Productions, a production company based in Amman, Jordan, that has made a significant mark on the industry over the past 19 years. Johnny’s innovative approach to production and his unwavering commitment to quality have been the foundation of his successful career. His creative leadership has spearheaded an array of content from commercial international projects, such as the Korean feature films The Point Men (2020) and Wonderland (2021), both shot in Jordan. One of his notable achievements is the popular YouTube comedy show Bath Bayakha, which successfully ran for three seasons. Inspired by the power of diverse narratives, Johnny strives to bring stories to life with authenticity and innovation. His personal philosophy revolves around the belief that filmmaking is not just a craft, but a powerful medium to inspire, challenge, and connect with audiences worldwide. Johnny is excited to be a part of the Toronto Film Festival jury and looks forward to contributing to the recognition of cinematic excellence.
BIOS//سير
Jordan DeBiasi
After completing his BA in Film & Media Production ’13, Jordan DeBiasi worked as a camera operator for independent productions around the GTA. In 2014, he joined an international automotive manufacturer as their Marketing Advisor, creating all B2B promotional material. Shortly thereafter gaining green belt certification in 6 Sigma, he then completed a Graduate Certificate in Global Business Management ’17. In 2017, Jordan accepted a leadership role, within operations, as their material’s supervisor supporting a distribution facility, internal logistics and painter supplier relations. In 2021, he accepted admission to Schulich School of Business to complete his MBA, specializing in Art’s, Media & Entertainment Management, class of 2023. Upon graduation, he aims to pivot back into the entertainment space, as an aspiring producer.
Joseph Fahim
Joseph Fahim is an Egyptian film critic and programmer. He is the Arab delegate of the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, the 2018 curator of London’s Safar Film Fest, a former member of Berlin Critics’ Week and the ex director of programming of the Cairo International Film Festival. He co-authored various books on Arab cinema and has written for numerous outlets around the world, including Middle East Eye, Middle East Institute, BBC, Mubi, Verite, Al Monitor, Al Jazeera, and The National (U.A.E.). To date, his writings have been translated into six different languages. He is also a script consultant and has worked with various funds and producers in the Arab World and Europe.
Jude Abu Zaineh
Jude Abu Zaineh is a Palestinian-Canadian interdisciplinary artist and cultural worker. Her practice employs art, food, and technology to investigate meanings of culture, displacement, diaspora, and belonging. She examines ideals of home and community while working to develop aesthetics rooted in her childhood and upbringing in the Middle East. Abu Zaineh is the recipient of the 2020 William and Meredith Saunderson Prizes for Emerging Artists, and was one of the first selected artists to participate in a collaborative residency with the Ontario Science Centre and MOCA Toronto. She has presented her work at a number of cultural institutions, including Cultivamos Cultura, São Luis, Portugal; Museu de Arte, Arquitetura e Tecnologia, Lisbon, Portugal; Centro de Cultura Digital, Mexico City, Mexico; SVA, NYC, USA; Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco, USA; Forest City Gallery, London, Canada; Art Gallery of Windsor, Canada; 2023 Ireland Glass Biennale; Museum of Glass, Washington, USA; and Centre Culturel Canadien, Paris, France. Forthcoming works showing at Museum London x Media City Film Festival, London, Canada; and Artcite, Windsor, Canada. Abu Zaineh received an MFA from the University of Windsor, and is currently a PhD Candidate in Electronic Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as a RPI HASS Fellow and SSHRC Doctoral Fellow. She maintains an active studio practice between upstate NY, USA, and Windsor-Essex, Canada
Jude Chehab
Jude Chehab is a Lebanese-American filmmaker based between New York and Beirut. Her cinematic interests have drawn her to the exploration of the esoteric, the spiritual and the unspoken. A richly layered visual and intimate personal shooting style developed under the mentorship of Abbas Kiarostami’s final student group; Jude has been credited in collaborations with the BBC, Refinery29, Oxfam GB, and Doctors Without Borders. She has worked as a DP internationally, on films in Somalia, Sudan and Pakistan and was an AP on Sesame Street’s Ahlan Simsim. Her work has been awarded fellowships through: CAAM, BGDM, NeXtDoc, Points North Institute, Firelight Media, Close-Up and Chicken & Egg. Jude is currently in post production on her first feature documentary and has been supported by: IDA, ITVS, TFI, and Sundance. In 2021, Filmmaker Magazine named her one of the 25 New Faces of Independent Film. Her short film 300 Days of Sun, will be screening at this year’s Hot Docs Film Festival. And her debut feature, Q, will be screening at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. judechehab.com
Kamal Riahi
Kamal Riahi is a novelist, critic and founder of Beit al-Riwaya in Tunisia. He has been a regular contributor to Arab and international cultural media since the 1990s. He has led many workshops in creative, journalistic and critical writing in Tunisia and the Arab world.
Karam Masri
Karam Masri is a Program Consultant for Film & Television at Ontario Creates, the provincial agency that supports the economic development of Ontario’s cultural sectors. Prior to joining Ontario Creates, Karam was the Business Analyst at the Bell Fund, a private fund that supports the creation and development of Canadian digital/TV multi-platform projects. Karam holds two Master’s degrees: an MFA in Film Production and an MBA from the Schulich School of Business. She also wrote & directed the short film “Juha the Whale”, winner of the York Thesis prize.
Karan Archana
Karan Archana is a Sainte-Adèle, Québec based writer/filmmaker. Their first short film ‘Faceless’ (2012), explored supremacy of the white majority in the LGBTQI+ communities in North America. Karan’s projects focus on telling untold stories of othered peoples and communities, and as a queer person of South Asian origin, aim to bring South Asian stories to an international audience. Karan’s last short film ‘Mum Singh’, received funding from the Canadian and Québec Arts councils, and premiered at the Reel Pride Film festival, Winnipeg, having screened at other Canadian and international film festivals. Their latest short ‘Pass the Salt‘ will be releasing in the Summer of 2024 and they are developing their first feature ‘Zoya iman Ayaz‘.
Karen Habib
Karen Habib is a content writer born in Beirut, Lebanon, raised around the UAE, currently based in BC. While studying Film in Toronto, Karen noticed an absence of Arab films and filmmakers on Canadian screens. Her desire to change that and give back to her Arab heritage is what brought her to The Toronto Arab Film. She is excited to share with the public the various Pan-Arab voices and their captivating stories.
Karim Barka
Karim Barka is a visual artist born in 1990 in Tiznit, Morocco. His artistic career began at the Applied Arts Faculty of Tiznit in 2010. He continued his studies at the National Institute of Fine Arts in Tetouan, graduating in 2015. He works with various media including: drawing, installation, photography and video.
His artwork is based around the body and its relationship to time and space. It reaffirms subjective experience as the point of authenticity in human life and demonstrates how life extends beyond its own subjective limits.
Katie Connell
Katie Connell is a writer, programmer, and educator based in Toronto. Her writing on film has appeared in Canadian and international publications, including Another Gaze, Canadian Art, Cineaste, Cinema Scope, Hyperallergic, Little White Lies, MUBI Notebook, Vulture and Reverse Shot. She is a former board member at Pleasure Dome and a current programmer of multiple years at Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ film festival. Katie is passionate about the ways that film can create and strengthen relationships between individuals and communities.
Kelly Lui
Kelly Lui is the Distribution Coordinator at Ouat Media, a Toronto-based distribution and sales company that specializes in short film. Recognized internationally as one of the world’s primary destinations for work by the industry’s rising stars, Ouat Media boasts an award-winning catalogue of titles featuring 12 Oscar® nominees including 3 Oscar® winners to date.
Kelly’s experience also includes festival programming, community arts facilitation, and multimedia art making. She has worked with Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, Toronto Youth Shorts Film Festival and is a co-founder of The Asian Canadian Living Archive (TACLA) collective.
Lamis Haggag
Lamis Haggag is an Egyptian multimedia artist, living and working between Cairo and Toronto. She received her MFA from The University of Calgary in 2013 and her BFA from Helwan University, Cairo in 2008. She participated in exhibitions and residencies in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, St. Thomas Ontario, Cairo, Beijing, Dakar, Lagos, Berlin, Incheon and Aswan.
In addition to her art practice, Haggag is an art instructor, installer and proposal writer. She received various grants and scholarships in Canada from CCA, TAC, OAC, AFA, Interaccess Artist-run Center and the University of Calgary. Haggag is also the recipient of awards and grants from the Goethe Institute in Lagos, the Goethe Institute in Cairo, Incheon Foundation for Arts and Culture (IFAC) in Incheon, Al Mawred Al Thaqafy for the Arab region, Kamel Lazaar Foundation in Tunisia and various awards from the Ministry of culture in Egypt.
Lamis Souliman
Lamis Souliman is an Egyptian filmmaker, set designer and a visual artist. She graduated with a Master’s in Film Design from Alexandria University, as well as a Master’s in New Media at École supérieure d’art d’Aix-en-Provence. Through her academic work as a researcher and assistant lecturer, she examines theories around expressionist design and the sequential role of visuals that offer film a special visual language, creating poetry out of set design.
Lana Lovell
Lana Lovell came off a six-year hiatus with a surge of work. In 2017, she wrote the play “Elbow Room,” which went into pre-development in 2018 with Toronto’s Obsidian Theatre and was produced at Fringe 2019. Then she wrote the short play “The First 100 Years of Sophia Pooley” for Fringe 2020, during COVID-19 she began developing her play into a full-length production.
During Lana’s artistic hiatus, she worked as a freelance Associate Producer on George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight at the CBC.
Currently, she’s developing two documentaries including “Taking Space,” after a very difficult experience in 2010 as the director of “Resilience: Stories of Single Black Mothers,” a film that countered stereotypes of black mothers with complex and richly detailed portraits of real women. Before that, Lana was commissioned by Omni Television for the project. She directed the documentary “The Incomparable Jackie Richards” (2008), which explored the life and times of cabaret artist, theatre and film actor, performer Jackie Richardson, broadcasted on Bravo Television for 5 years. Lana’s first music content documentary, “Underground,” screened at Toronto’s Hot Docs Film Festival (2006) won praise for capturing the complex central character’s, Coco Brown, life and artistry. “Into the Heart of Africa” (1996), the first film Lana directed was about the protest during the contentious exhibit, of the same name, at the Royal Ontario Museum. Lana lives and works in Toronto, Canada.
Lobna Mahdi
Lobna Mahdi is the Outreach and Development Coordinator at TAF and the co-lead of the Nahda FilmLab. She holds an MA in Adult Education and Community Development and a Bachelor’s in Equity Studies and Psychology, both from the University of Toronto. During her graduate studies, she conducted research on the works of lower-class Egyptian women filmmakers of the early 20th century, demonstrating their pioneering role in the Egyptian and Arab arts and their influence on nationalist and feminist discourse of their time. With a vision of sparking an Arab-Canadian film renaissance/Nahda, Lobna is dedicated to creating learning and training opportunities for the next generation of Arab filmmakers as well as providing Arab youth with safe spaces to imagine a world beyond imperialism, capitalism, and orientalism.
Maha Al-Saati
Maha Al-Saati is an independent, experimental filmmaker interested in exploring women’s stories in the Arab World. She is TIFF Filmmaker Lab 2020 and TIFF Writers’ Studio 2021 Alum, and honorary recipient of the Share Her Journey Award and The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) residency 2021. Her short films include Hair: The Story of Grass (18), an official selection of Fantastic Fest 2018, Slamdance 2019, and HollyShorts 2019; Cycle of Apples (19); and Fear: Audibly (17). Her feature project Hajj to Disney was selected for development by the Red Sea Lodge in partnership with TorinoFilmLab.
Majd Khnouf
Majd Khnouf is a Palestinian Jordanian with a background in industrial engineering. This experience has led to professional roles within the engineering and IT sectors in several capacities, including human resources consultant, proposals, business development, project coordination, and project management. She is currently pursuing her MBA in Toronto at the Schulich School of Business. She takes great pride in Youth for Music Association, a non-profit organization she co-founded with the goal of encouraging the continuity and growth of youth musicians in Jordan. She hopes that her experience and interest in films will help in shedding light on talented Arab filmmakers.
Mariam El Ajraoui
Mariam El Ajraoui is a Moroccan-French scholar specializing in the cinemas of the Arab world, which she examines from a decolonial perspective. Her doctoral dissertation, titled Filmic References in Moroccan Cinema: An Aesthetic and Political Practice, presented at the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, explores, through the study of filmic citations, the aesthetic and political issues in the formation of a national cinema in a postcolonial context. A co-founder of the research program Contextes et Imaginaires des Cinémas du Monde Arabe (CICMA), Mariam El Ajraoui is also a filmmaker and actress in self-produced films, favoring independence from the film industry, which she nevertheless enjoys observing and analyzing.