Let Them Come

Salem Brahimi is an Algerian and French producer and director. After co-directing with Chergui Kharroubi AFRICA IS BACK (doc), he directed ABD EL KADER (2013/doc). As a producer he produced and co-produced films such as MON COLONEL by Laurent Herbiet and CARTOUCHES GAULOISES by Mehdi Charef.

Nujoom Alghanem is an Emirati poet, scriptwriter and award-winning director. She has produced several short fictions and documentaries. In addition to producing her own films, she is also a film, media and cultural consultant to educational and professional institutes and organisations in the UAE. Alghanem’s filmography includes: NEARBY SKY (2014), which won Best Non-Fiction Prize in the Muhr Feature competition at DIFF and AMAL (2011), which won First Prize in the Muhr Emirati competition at DIFF. 

Alexis Gambis is a French-Venezuelan scientist-veered filmmaker who has been featured by The New York Times, TED, Nature, Science, Cell, The Village Voice, and WNYC. His films gravitate towards docu-fiction and embrace animal perspectives. He has written and directed over a dozen shorts that have played at festivals worldwide. He is one of the 10 filmmakers of the omnibus 2014 film THE COLOR OF TIME, starring James Franco, Mila Kunis, and Jessica Chastain.

His first feature film THE FLY ROOM is based on the true story of the birth of modern genetics at the turn of the 20th century. An NYU Graduate Thesis Film and produced with the support of Spike Lee Production Fund and Hollywood Foreign Press Association, THE FLY ROOM has played in over 50 cities and had its theatrical release in New York in late September 2016. Forbes applauded the bio for its “witty script” and ability to “communicate science in a subtle way.”

Alexis Gambis is Founder & Executive Director of the Imagine Science Film Festival, an annual New York science film festival now in its 9th year. He also recently launched Labocine, a VOD platform and video magazine coined by reviewers as the “science new wave”  which proposes a new way to experience science cinema.  He received a Masters of Fine Arts from NYU Tisch School of the Arts and a Ph.D in Molecular Biology from The Rockefeller University. He teaches part of the year courses at New York University in Abu Dhabi at the intersect of neuroscience and film.

He lives between Brooklyn, Paris and Abu Dhabi.

Mohannad Al Bakri (moderator) joined the Arts Center as Director of External Relations and Partnerships to help bring together the communities of NYUAD, Abu Dhabi, and the region through shared artistic journeys. Working on several community engagement activities that will contribute to building the cultural, artistic and capacity building. 

Previously, Al Bakri led Luminus Media-Jordan as Regional Managing Director bringing to the organization new creative process thorough establishing SAE institute in the Arab region. He also made many partnerships possible through the media programs that were established in KSA, Libya and Iraq. 

His previous position at the Royal Film Commission- Jordan (RFC), Al Bakri worked on developing the Film industry and the Capacity Building Programs in Jordan overseeing their strategic planning and implementation and supervising the national, regional and international partnerships. Among those programs, the Jordanian filmmakers hub, the Film House; Rawi Screenwriters’ Lab, a regional screenwriters program run in partnership with Sundance Institute; the Educational Feature Film Program in partnership with the University of Southern California (USC) and various regional and international organizations and professionals; the Filmmakers Support Program and the extension of the Film House activities outside capital Amman through the Film Clubs programs. Furthermore, he was co-founder and Pedagogical Team Member of Med Film Factory, a semi-professional regional training program for Arab Producers and Director.