Kamal Aljafari

Kamal Aljafari is a Palestinian filmmaker and visual artist.

Early life

Aljafari was born to a Palestinian family in Ramla. His maternal family is from Jaffa, while his paternal family is from Ramla; both families were internally displaced and resettled to homes that had previously belonged to other Palestinians.
He attended a Catholic school in Jaffa as a child. As a teenager, he served time at a juvenile prison in the Naqab desert during the First Intifada. He later attended university in Jerusalem before leaving Palestine for Germany at the age of 26. He graduated from the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. He was based in New York City and Berlin before moving to Paris.

Aljafari directed his first short film, Visit Iraq, while a film student in Germany. In 2009, he was a featured artist at the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, and was later a Benjamin White Whitney Scholar at Harvard University from 2009 to 2010. His film A Fidai Film premiered in the Burning Lights competition of Visions du Réel, where it won the Jury Award. His film With Hasan in Gaza premiered in the international competition of the 78th Locarno Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Golden Leopard.
He has served on the juries of: