Paola Caridi Journalist, born in Rome, is a founding member of the News Agency “Lettera22”. She wrote for national and local Italian newspaper. PhD in History of International Relations, she is specialised on Middle East and Northern Africa region. Correspondent in Cairo (2001-2003), she has been based from 2003 to 2012 in Jerusalem. Lecturer at the University of Palermo on History of International Relations, Paola Caridi is also a member of the International Affairs Institute.
She published in 2007 Arabi Invisibili. In 2009, she published Hamas. Seven Stories Press published in March, 2012, the American version of the book, updated and with an added chapter on the latest events. In 2011, she edited and translated the Italian edition of Aswani’s book On the State of Egypt. In 2013 she published Gerusalemme senza Dio. Ritratto di una Città Crudele.
From 2008 she maintains invisiblearabs.com, a blog on Arab politics and pop culture.
She is a Knight of the Order of the Italian Solidarity’s Star, order chaired by the President of the Italian Republic.
Maria Cuffaro is a reporter and anchorwoman for the Italian broadcasting TG3. Born to an Italian father and Swiss-Indian mother, as a young girl she tried to be a painter with two exhibitions, in Rome in 1980 and Athens in 1986. Teacher of English language at primary school, she collaborated with the artistic magazine Leade. After that she worked for the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto, as reporter from India, Pakistan and South Africa. From 1986 she worked for the radio and for the magazines Sette and Il venerdì di Repubblica. She also collaborated with L’Espresso, Avvenimenti and Channel 4.
In 1989 she presented Il filo d’Arianna, with reports from abroad for the Italian Television. The following year Sandro Curzi convinced her to work for the News channel – TG3 in the Italian television. She presented C’era una volta, and collaborated with Michele Santoro in Il rosso e il nero and Sciuscià.
In 2005 she was awarded with the Ilaria Alpi prize and in 2007 with the Maria Grazia Cutuli prize for her report from Nassiriyah. She published the book Il Kajal – le vite degli altri e la mia (Imprimatur 2012).
Wasim Dahmash palestinese nato a Damasco nel 1948, ha insegnato Lingua e Letteratura araba all’Università di Cagliari e Dialettologia araba all’Università di Roma-Sapienza. I suoi ambiti di ricerca si concentrano principalmente sulle questioni attinenti la traduzione letteraria. Dirige la casa editrice Edizione Q specializzata in letteratura palestinese e araba. Tra le sue traduzioni dall’arabo all’italiano Versi di Ibrahim Nasrallah (Edizioni Q 2009) e Stato d’assedio di Mahmud Darwish (Edizioni Q 2014), e dall’italiano all’arabo, E. Montale, S. Quasimodo, I. Calvino, P.P. Pasolini. E’ membro della giuria del Festival Al Ard di Cagliari.
Sahera Dirbas is a Haifa-born and Jerusalem-based filmmaker and freelance producer. Until 2007 she worked for international TV stations, such as Rai and BBC, after which she began working as an independent filmmaker. Films directed by Dirbas include: Between Heaven & Earth (2015), Sumud (2015), Deir Yassin Village and Massacre (2012), Jerusalem Bride (2010), 138 Pounds in my Pocket (2009), Crystal Grapes (2009), A Handful of Earth (2008), and Stranger in My Home – Jerusalem (2007). All of these films have participated in international film festivals, and Stranger in My Home-Jerusalem was awarded in the Euro Arab Film festival in Spain and has been translated into 6 languages. In 2013, Dirbas started a documentary training project for Palestinian women directors, which resulted in the production of five independent films about Palestinian women’s oral history. Between 1989-91, she also published three books about three destroyed Palestinian villages: Tirat Haifa, Al-Birweh, and Salameh.
Fatena al-Ghorra Is a writer form Gaza, now living in Belgium. She published five collections of poems. Her works have been translated in several languages, among them Spanish, Dutch and French. In 2012 she was awarded with El Hizjira Literature Prize, a Dutch award for foreigner writers. Simone Sibilio translated her poems in Italian, which have been published in an anthology and in Tradire il Signore, Cascio, Lugano 2011. After working long for Palestinian media, she is now a free-lance journalist for Al Jaazira. Among her more recent literary experiences, she launched the project The poetic salon of Fatena, in Holland. She also participated in the International Writing Residency at the University in Iowa.
Valerio Mastandrea attore di teatro, cinema e televisione. Dopo aver debuttato nel 1993 in teatro, approda quasi per caso alla carriera cinematografica con Ladri di cinema (1994).
È stato candidato dieci volte ai David di Donatello, vincendo per quattro volte il premio, fra cui come miglior attore protagonista in La prima cosa bella di Paolo Virzì nel 2010 e nel 2017 come Miglior attore non protagonista per Fiore.
Ha inoltre ottenuto il Premio Pasolini Pigneto 2002 come Miglior attore per Velocità massima, il premio “Ciak d’oro” nel 2013 come Migliore attore non protagonista per Viva la libertà e il Nastro d’argento speciale per Perfetti sconosciuti nel 2016.
Fa parte del comitato scientifico della Scuola d’arte cinematografica Gian Maria Volonté: una scuola pubblica e gratuita, istituita dalla Provincia di Roma nel 2011, che rappresenta oggi un polo formativo di riconosciuta eccellenza per le professioni del cinema.
Monica Maurer. Academic, writer and film maker studied Sociology and Communication Sciences at university in Munich and Berlin before working as a journalist for several newspapers in Germany and the radical US magazine “Ramparts”. Late she wrote features for television and became an assistant director to the avant-guarde director Carmelo Bene. Due to growing anti-arab tensions in 1974 she left film-making in favour of political activism, setting up a multinational bookshop for immigrant workers in Cologne (Germany). From 1977 on she worked as a director and writer with Palestinian Cinema Institution (PLO Unified Information) and the Information Department of the PRCS (Palestine Red Crescent Society) in Beirut, producing a number of films on the issue of Palestine including Palestine Red Crescent, Children of Palestine, The Fifth War, Born out of Death and Palestine in Flames. From 1994/96 she lectured International School of Film and TV in Cuba an now lives in Rome where she continues to teach and work as a film consultant.
Dina Naser is a Jordanian director, writer, and producer with Palestinian roots, Dina Naser holds a BA in Art and Graphic Design. Following her passion for filmmaking, she was granted the scholarship for DOCNOMADS Mobile Documentary School for a two-year MA programme in Lisbon, Budapest, and Brussels. She worked her way through a variety of television and film productions, until she began to direct and produce independently. Her first works are inspired by stories from her homeland. Her short documentary film ‘Shamieh’ (2011) portrays an aging Palestinian woman living in the Zizya refugee camp in Jordan. Her award winning ‘One Minute’ (2015) tells the story of a woman living in Gaza while it was under attack in 2014. ‘Sea Wash’ (co-director, 2016), a short experimental film, pictures refugees who lost their lives at sea. ‘Tiny Souls’, a documentary project first realized in a nine-minute format, will be Naser’s first feature length Documentary.
Amer Shomali, born in Kuwait, Shomali holds a BSc in Architecture from Birzeit University in Palestine, and a Master’s degree in Animation from Bournemouth University in the United Kingdom. He is currently based in Ramallah, Palestine.
Amer Shomali is a Palestinian multidisciplinary artist, using painting, films, digital media, installations and comics as tools to explore and interact with the sociopolitical scene in Palestine. Much of Shomali’s work examines the creation and the use of the Palestinian revolution’s iconography.
His art works are part of several collections: The British Museum, the Museum of Manufactured Response to Absence (MoMRtA), Birzeit University Museum, Al-Qattan Foundation; as well as the private collections of Dr. Ramzi Dalloul, Ms. Rana Sadik, Mr. Hashim Shawa, Mr. Rami Nimer, and Mr. George Al Ama. Shomali co-directed an award winning animated documentary, The Wanted 18, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2014. The film was awarded the best documentary award in Abu Dhabi, Carthage, Traverse City, and Al-Jazeera Film Festivals. The Wanted 18 was in the official submission lists for the foreign language and documentary categories of the Oscars 88th.
Alessandro Tiberi Figlio dell’attore e doppiatore Piero Tiberi, inizia a lavorare come doppiatore e a recitare sin da piccolo.
Acquisisce le prime esperienze professionali proprio nell’ambito del doppiaggio: esordisce prestando la voce a Mickey Mouse, in Fievel sbarca in America (1986) e al protagonista del film di Salvatore Cascio C’era un castello con 40 cani (1989).
Il suo debutto cinematografico come attore risale invece al 1990, quando Ricky Tognazzi lo recluta per una piccola parte nel suo Ultrà.
Al cinema è poi presente con la trasposizione cinematografica della serie tv che ha fatto gran parte del suo successo, Boris – Il film (2010) ed ha una parte divertente nella pellicola di Paolo Genovese “Immaturi” (2011). Nel 2012 ha poi la grande occasione di lavorare con Woody Allen sul set di “To Rome With Love”. Dal 2013 al 2014 recita per il piccolo schermo in produzioni tv, come “Volare – La grande storia di Domenico Modugno” e “Amore oggi”.