Person Biography:
Hisham Bizri is a Lebanese-born American film director, writer, and producer. He started his career in the film industry as an assistant director to Raúl Ruiz in New York City and to Miklós Jancsó in Budapest.
Throughout his career, Bizri has directed 29 short films and written numerous screenplays adapted from classic works such as Gilgamesh, Jorge Luis Borges, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Al-Tayyib Salih, and James Joyce. In 2021, he made his feature film debut with "Elektra", which he also wrote and co-produced with Mirna Shbaro in Beirut.
Bizri's academic background includes studying filmmaking at Boston, Harvard, and Chicago universities. He has also taught at various institutions, including MIT, NYU, the University of Chicago, UC Davis, Boston, and the University of Minnesota, as well as in Lebanon, Korea, Japan, Ireland, France, and Jordan, where he founded several filmmaking programs. Currently, he serves as a tenured Professor of Film Directing and Screenwriting at Brown University in Rhode Island.
Bizri's work has been showcased at numerous international film festivals, including Sundance, Beirut, Oberhausen, Tribeca, VideoEx, Mizna, Montpelier, Athens, San Francisco, Pesaro, Moscow, Ismailia, 25FPS Croatia, Brussels Palais des Beaux-Arts, and Abu Dhabi film festivals. He has also exhibited his work at prominent museums and cultural institutions, such as the Louvre, Institut du Monde Arabe, Cinémathèque Française, Centre Pompidou, MoMa, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Jeu de Paume, Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art, Harvard, and Anthology Film Archives (NY),among others.
Throughout his career, Bizri has received numerous awards and honors, including the McKnight, Salomon, LEF, Jerome, Bogliasco, Rockefeller, Ford, Guggenheim, Cairo International Film Festival Special Jury Prize for best screenplay, and the Rome Prize from the American Academy. In 2017, he was awarded The Andrei Tarkovsky Prize for best director.
In addition to his work in film, Bizri has been involved in various projects and initiatives. In 2005, he co-founded The Arab Institute of Film in Jordan with the late Syrian filmmaker Omar Amiralay and Danish producer Jakob Høgel, with support from the International Media Support (Copenhagen) and the Ford Foundation (NYC). He has also served as Producer at Future TV (Beirut),Creative Director of Orbit Communications Company (Rome),and President & Creative Director of Levantine Films (NYC). In 2019, he founded Mimera Films, his own film practice studio.
Currently, Bizri is living between Paris, Berlin, and Manhattan.
