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Annemarie Jacir
2010/2011 Film Protégée
Published in 2011
Annemarie Jacir, a visionary, Palestinian film director and poet living in Jordan, was named one of Filmmaker magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Cinema in 2004, a year after graduating with a Master’s in Fine Arts from New York’s Columbia University. Co-founder of the Dreams of a Nation project, dedicated to promoting Palestinian cinema, Jacir deftly incorporates a nuanced analysis of cultural and political issues in her films, including like twenty impossibles (2003), an Official Selection of the Cannes Cinéfondation. Her widely acclaimed debut feature, Salt of this Sea (2008), the first feature film by a female Palestinian director, premiered at Cannes and was an Academy Award submission for Best Foreign Language Film. It also won the FIPRESCI International Critics’ Prize. Currently completing post-production of a new feature, When I Saw You, a coming-of-age-story about a 12-year-old boy, Jacir cites Raise the Red Lantern, the celebrated film by Zhang Yimou, her Mentor in the 2010-2011 Rolex Arts Initiative, as a source of inspiration. “Films that I find the most inspiring are about the human spirit,” she says.