The seven-day film festival is online and free, with English subtitles for each movie.
It features shorts programs, feature films from established and emerging filmmakers as well as industry talks with the likes of Michael Rakowitz, Zahraa Ghandour and Mohammed Khalid.
The founders:
- Róisín Tapponi is an Assyrian Iraqi-Irish film curator, programmer, writer and academic based in London. She is the co-founder and programmer of IIFF, she is also the founder of Habibi Collective, founder CEO of Shasha Movies, and founder EIC of ART WORK Magazine. She is a writer at Frieze Magazine, and has recently been awarded the ‘World-Leading PhD Art History Scholarship’ at St. Andrews.
- Shahnaz Dulaimy is originally from Iraq and grew up in Jordan. She is a feature film editor and the first Avid Certified Editor in the Middle East. She began her editing career by working on multi-award-winning productions including the Oscar nominated film "Theeb" by Naji Abu Nowar, and Annemarie Jacir’s "When I Saw You". Most recently, she has been working alongside the Oscar nominated director Basil Khalil on his first feature length film "A Gaza Weekend".
Program of the Festival: here.