Annemarie Jacir has written, directed and produced over 16 films. Her films have premiered in Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Locarno, Rotterdam and Toronto, and all of her feature films have been selected as Palestine’s official Oscar entry. Her short film Like Twenty Impossible (2003) was the first Arab short film to be selected in Cannes and continued to break ground as a finalist for the Academy Awards.
In 2007, Jacir shot the first feature film by a Palestinian female director, the acclaimed Salt of This Sea. Her second work to debut in Cannes, Salt of This Sea went on to win the FIPRESCI Critics Award, and 14 other international awards including Best Film in Milan.
Her second feature When I Saw You won Best Asian Film at the Berlinale and garnered a nomination at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. Other films by Jacir, who works in both fiction and documentary, have included Until When, A Few Crumbs for the Birds, and a Post Oslo History. Wajib (2017) won 36 international awards, including awards at Mar Del Plata, Dubai, and the London BFI Festival.
In 2019, New York’s prestigious BAM art center held the first retrospective of her work. In 2024, the Toronto International Film Festival hosted her in a retrospective of her work, screening many works for the first time. In November that year she was granted a BlackStar Luminary Award.
In 2022, she directed for the groundbreaking Hulu hit series Ramy. She has been granted an honorary doctorate by Artois University in France for her contribution to cinema. She lives and works in Palestine.
The Asia Pacific Screen Academy expresses its respect for and acknowledgement of the South East Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. We pay our respects to the Traditional Owners of country, including the custodial communities on whose land works are created and celebrated by the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. We acknowledge the continuing connection to land, waters and communities. We also pay our respects to Elders, past and present. We recognise the integral role Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and First Nations peoples continue to play in storytelling and celebration spaces.
