Zayn Alexander | |
|---|---|
 Zayn Alexander at the 2018 Santa Barbara International Film Festival | |
| Born | |
| Alma mater | |
| Occupation(s) | Director, Actor |
| Years active | 2012 - present |
Zayn Alexander is a Lebanese film director and actor based in New York City. [1] He is known for his work on the short films Abroad and Manara .
Alexander was born and raised in Lebanon. [2] [3] Alexander studied psychology at the American University of Beirut and left for the United States to pursue acting in 2010. [2] [4] In New York City, he met fellow actor, Pascale Seigneurie, who would soon become a frequent collaborator. [4] The two paired up to create Abroad , a film about a Lebanese couple pursuing their acting dreams in America and struggling with being typecast in Middle Eastern roles. Seigneurie wrote the short film, Alexander directed. [2] [5] [6] The film was shot in one day. [5] It debuted at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in 2018. [6] [2] [7] [8] The Moise A. Khayrallah Center has awarded Alexander and Abroad The 2020 Khayrallah Art Prize. [9] [10]
In 2019, Alexander and Seigneurie followed up with Manara , a short film about a Lebanese funeral and a family coping with the cultural pressures of Lebanese society. [4] Manara was filmed in Tyre, Lebanon. [4] [11] It debuted during the 76th Venice International Film Festival in September 2019. [4]
| Year | Film | Actor | Role | Director | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Abroad |  | Jad | | Short film |
| 2019 | Manara | | Rami | | Short film |
Tyre is a city in Lebanon, one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world, though in medieval times for some centuries by just a small population. It was one of the earliest Phoenician metropolises and the legendary birthplace of Europa, her brothers Cadmus and Phoenix, as well as Carthage's founder Dido (Elissa). The city has many ancient sites, including the Tyre Hippodrome, and was added as a whole to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1984. The historian Ernest Renan noted that "One can call Tyre a city of ruins, built out of ruins".
Elia Suleiman is a Palestinian film director and actor. He is best known for the 2002 film Divine Intervention, a modern tragicomedy on living under occupation in Palestine which won the Jury Prize at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. Suleiman's cinematic style is often compared to that of Jacques Tati and Buster Keaton, for its poetic interplay between "burlesque and sobriety". He is married to Lebanese singer and actress Yasmine Hamdan.
Lebanese diaspora refers to Lebanese migrants and their descendants who emigrated from Lebanon and now reside in other countries. There are more Lebanese living outside Lebanon than within the country. The diaspora population consists of Christians, Muslims, Druze, and Jews. The Christians trace their origin to several waves of emigration, starting with the exodus that followed the 1860 Lebanon conflict in Ottoman empire.
Nadine Labaki is a Lebanese and Canadian actress, director, and activist. Labaki first came into the spotlight as an actress in the early 2000s. Her filmmaking career began in 2007 after the release of her debut film, Caramel, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. She is known for demonstrating everyday aspects of Lebanese life and covering a range of political issues such as war, poverty, and feminism. She is the first female Arab director to be nominated for an Oscar in the category for Best Foreign Language Film for her third directorial effort, Capernaum (2018).
Middle Eastern cinema collectively refers to the film industries of West Asia and part of North Africa. By definition, it encompasses the film industries of Egypt, Iran, Bahrain, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Palestine, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. As such, the film industries of these countries are also part of the cinema of Asia, or in the case of Egypt, Africa.
Moisés Arias is an American actor. He portrayed Rico in the Disney Channel series Hannah Montana, Biaggio in the 2013 Sundance film The Kings of Summer, Cokestraw in the 2019 SXSW comedy-drama The Wall of Mexico, Bigfoot in the Colombian war drama Monos, and Norm MacLean in the Amazon Prime Video drama series Fallout. He has also appeared in Pitch Perfect 3, Five Feet Apart, Ender's Game, The Stanford Prison Experiment, Jockey, The Perfect Game, and The King of Staten Island.
Manara may refer to:
The Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF) is an eleven-day film festival held in Santa Barbara, California in February annually, since 1986. The festival screens over 200 feature films and shorts from different countries and regions. SBIFF also includes celebrity tributes, industry panels and education programs.
Philippe Aractingi(فيليب عرقتنجي) is a Lebanese author, director, producer, actor and photographer. Aractingi is Franco-Lebanese.
The cinema of Lebanon, according to film critic and historian Roy Armes, is the only other cinema in the Arabic-speaking region, beside Egypt's, that could amount to a national cinema. Cinema in Lebanon has been in existence since the 1920s, and the country has produced more than 500 films.
Akram Fouad Khater is a Lebanese-born American professor, historian, and author. He serves as a professor of history, and the director of the Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies at North Carolina State University (NCSU). He specializes in the history of Lebanon, Lebanese Studies and diaspora, the Middle Eastern history, and Arab relations.
Nasri Atallah is a British-Lebanese author, award-winning producer, television host and media entrepreneur. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of Esquire Middle East, one of the co-founders of Last Floor Productions and a former contributing writer at GQ Middle East.
Rania Stephan is a Lebanese filmmaker and video artist. She is best known for her first feature film The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni (2011).
Salloum Antoun Mokarzel was an influential Lebanese American intellectual and publisher. He was the younger brother of Naoum Mokarzel who was the founder of Al-Hoda, one of the first Arabic language newspapers published in the United States. Between December 1918 and June 1926, he published and edited "The Syrian-American Commercial Magazine", also known as "The New World". In 1926, he founded and published The Syrian World, a magazine that published articles on the history and culture of Greater Syria, which at the time consisted of and referred to the modern day states and territories of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine. After The Syrian World ceased publication as a magazine in 1932, Salloum converted the publication to a weekly newspaper. After Naoum's death in 1932, Salloum took over Al-Hoda, which passed at his death in 1952 to his daughter Mary. The newspaper closed in 1971.
Farah ALHashim is a Kuwaiti-Lebanese filmmaker and journalist based in Paris. ALHashim has been making films since 2011 including 7 Hours, which won several awards at film festivals in 2013 and Breakfast in Beirut in 2015, which was honored at multiple festivals.
Georges Nasser was a Lebanese director. He is considered to have been a pioneering figure in Lebanese cinema and is credited with having put Lebanon on global movie-making map.
Manara is the second short film directed by Lebanese filmmaker Zayn Alexander. It premiered in 2019 during the 76th Venice International Film Festival in the Giornate degli Autori section. The film was awarded the top prize at the 5th annual Laguna Sud - Il Cinema fuori dal Palazzo by a jury that included director Paola Randi, director of photography Valerio Azzali, and writer Franceso Targhetta. It went on to win the "Ahmed Khedr Award for Excellence in Arab Filmmaking" at the 2020 ÉCU The European Independent Film Festival and "Best Narrative Short Film" at the 2020 Alexandria Short Film Festival in Egypt.
Fadia Ahmad is a Spanish-Lebanese photographer, artist, and filmmaker.
Abroad is a short film directed by Lebanese filmmaker Zayn Alexander. The film made its world premiere at the 33rd Santa Barbara International Film Festival on February 2, 2018. The Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies awarded Alexander the 2020 Khayrallah Art Prize for the film.
Takla Chamoun Farjallah is a Lebanese actress, drama instructor, producer, and the co-founder and CEO of the Lebanese Film Academy. Chamoun is highly regarded in the Middle East and the Arab World for her acting and her ability to mold into a character.