Facts &
Figures
Arab
Countries
16
Number of
Submissions
450
Female
Participation
43%
Editorial Cartoons
Mowafaq Katt | Syria
Born in Damascus in 1955, Mwafaq Katt is a cartoonist and animation filmmaker. He currently freelances editorial cartoons for several Arabic newspapers and magazines. His work was awarded in numerous international and local film festivals and competitions, including the Arab Journalism Award in 2016. Read more
Graphic Novels
Mai Koraiem | Egypt
Born in Alexandria on May 5, 1980, Mai Koraiem graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Painting Department, in 2003. In 2013, she started her comics career.Read more
Comics
Migo | Egypt
Born in 1988, Migo Mohamad is an Egyptian Comics artist and author. He studied film in the United States. He worked in many magazines such as TokTok, Samandal, Lab619, and Words Without Borders. Read more
Graphic Illustration
Michael Jabareen | Palestine
Michael J. is aNexperimental designer/artist who works on developing art expression methodologies to ensure the most efficient and effective connection with the audience by experimenting with integrating different schools of art, both visual and performance. Read more
www.behance.net/michaelmjabareen
Chilldren’s Book Illustration
Diala Brisly | Syria
Born in Kuwait to Syrian parents in 1980, Diala grew up in Damascus and was based there until the uprisings. She fled with legions of other artists fleeing to different countries until she got asylum in France, where she continued working on her projects as a freelancer. Read more
IBRAHIM L’MHADI
The Moroccan octogenarian Ibrahim Lmhadi is considered one of the earliest artists to lay the groundwork for cartoons in Morocco, and to begin to draw them amid the sensitive political and social circumstances in Morocco during the 1960s and 70s, at that time when cartoons were prohibited and confiscated. One of his published cartoons led to his detention, and he was banned from drawing for nearly two decades. Throughout these painful experiences, Lmhadi never ceased to be a remarkable creative soul, and he never renounced his belief in art and his message.
Masters of Illustration and Comics” at ALBA
As a pioneering illustration and comics program at the School of Graphic Arts, created in early 2000, Alba has issued over 103 Bachelor of Arts and 47 masters’ degrees in Illustration and Graphic Novels. ALBA’s master program has published many comics albums and produced the new generation of comics artists and illustrators playing a major role in the new movement of Arab comics. The Academy remains to date the only institution in the region to offer a complete masters program in these two disciplines.
6th Mahmoud Kahil
Award 2021 Finalists
Rashad Al Samei | Yemen
Bernard Haje | Lebanon
Noemie Honein | Lebanon
Hazem Kamal | Egypt
Ghadi Ghosn | Lebanon
Elia Tawil | Lebanon
Zeinab Ben Haouala | Tunisia
Othman Selmi | Tunisia
Diala Zada | Syria
Omar Lafi | Jordan
Meet the Jury
John Jennings
USA
Mathieu Diez
France
Emad Hajjaj
Jordan
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George Khoury
Lebanon
Olivier Kugler
Germany/UK
John Jennings is a Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California at Riverside. Jennings is co-editor of the Eisner Award-winning collection The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of the Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art. he is also a 2016 Nasir Jones Hip Hop Studies Fellow with the Hutchins Center at Harvard University. Jennings’ current projects include the horror anthology Box of Bones, the coffee table book Black Comix Returns (with Damian Duffy), and the Eisner-winning, Bram Stoker Award-winning, New York Times best-selling graphic novel adaptation of Octavia Butler’s classic dark fantasy novel Kindred. Duffy and Jennings recently released their graphic novelization of Octavia Bulter’s prescient dystopian novel Parable of the Sower (Abrams ComicArts). Jennings is also the founder and curator of the ABRAMS Megascope line of graphic novels.
www.creativedisturbance.org/john-jennings.com
Mathieu Diez could have had a career in the finance industry, however, after years devoted to financing other people’s projects, it was time to take care of his own. The first one was the “Café du bout du monde,” a cultural café located at the well-known Croix Rousse hill, in Lyon’s French city. In this place Mathieu met many comic artists and started to manage cultural projects with a passion that had not left him since childhood towards: the art of comics. A few years later, these projects became a festival defined as sequential art that intersected with many other forms of art and audiences. In ten years, Lyon BD Festival (Lyon Comics Festival) has established itself as one of the most innovative comic art festivals in Europe with comic artists invited to participate in live drawings, music concerts, and shows and performances taking place in museums, operas, and theaters throughout the city.
www.lyonbd.com
Jordanian Emad Hajjaj is one of the most famous contemporary cartoonists in the Arab world, well known for his character Abu Mahjoob. He has extensive experience in several Arabic and international newspapers – both print and online. Hajjaj has published many books, most notably his cartoon collection “Al-Mahjoob” in two volumes. Emad received several awards and is considered one of the pioneering digital artists in the Arabic region. He has produced animated films and satirical content prepared for social networking platforms. Hajjaj heads the Society of Cartoonists in Jordan and is a member of several cartoon societies.
George Khoury is a renowned Lebanese comics artist and critic. He has published several comic albums (graphic novels) and series in daily newspapers since the 1980s and received several awards. He authored several articles and essays on the history of comics in the Arab world, and continues to write critically on comics from the region. He has been head of the Animation Department at Future Television since its launch in 1993, and teaches at the Lebanese American University in Beirut.
Olivier Kugler studied visual communication in Germany and illustration at the School of Visual Arts in New York. He is a reportage illustrator based in London and has won many awards, including the Association of Illustrators (AOI) Gold Award in 2004 and 2008. He was the winner of the V&A Illustration Award in 2011 and the AOI World Illustration Awards in 2015. In June 2018, he won the Jury Prize of the European Design Awards and in November 2018, he won the Prix du Carnet de Voyage International and the Coup de Coeur Médecins Sans Frontières at the Rendez-vous du Carnet de Voyage.