When I Saw You

Annemarie Jacir (Arabic: آن ماري جاسر‎) was born on January 17, 1974, she is a Palestinian filmmaker and poet.

She has been working in independent cinema since 1994 and has written, directed and produced a number of award-winning films including Until When, A Few Crumbs for the Birds, and a Post Oslo History. She was named one of Filmmaker magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Cinema. Her short film, like twenty impossibles, the first Palestinian short film to be selected in Competition as an official selection of the Cannes International Film Festival (Cinefondation), went on to be a Student Academy Awards Finalist, and has won more than 15 awards at International festivals including Best Film at the Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films, Chicago International Film Festival, Institute Du Monde Arabe Biennale, Mannheim-Heidelberg Film Festival, and IFP/New York. like twenty impossibles was named one of the ten best films of 2003 by Gavin Smith of Film Comment Magazine (Editors Choice) is a fiction film which wryly questions artistic responsibility as a Palestinian film crew navigates various obstacles of the Israeli military occupation. In 2007, Jacir shot the first feature film by a Palestinian woman director, Salt of this Sea, the story of a refugee returning home. The film, released in 2008, is Palestine’s submission to the 81st Academy Awards for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Jacir’s poetry and stories have been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Mizna, the Crab Orchard Review, and The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology and she has read with poet Amiri Baraka. She has won several screenwriting awards and was a finalist for the Grand Prix du Meilleur Scenariste in Paris

She is chief curator and founder of the groundbreaking Dreams of a Nation Palestinian cinema project, dedicated to the promotion of Palestinian cinema. In 2003, she organized and curated the largest traveling film festival in Palestine, which included the screening of archival Palestinian films from Revolution Cinema, screening for the first time on Palestinian soil. She has taught courses at Columbia University, Bethlehem University, Birzeit University and in refugee camps in Palestine and Lebanon. She works as a freelance editor and cinematographer as well as film curator. Jacir is a board member of Alwan for the Arts, a cultural organization devoted to North African and Middle Eastern art. She is a founding member of the Palestinian Filmmakers’ Collective, based in Palestine.

Her 2012 film When I Saw You has been selected as the Palestinian entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 85th Academy Awards. —Wikipedia