Facts &
Figures
Arab
Countries
15
Number of
Submissions
300
Female
Participation
43%
Editorial Cartoons
Tawfik | Egypt
Tawfik is an award-winning visual artist, art director, and professional illustrator with expertise in animation, illustration, fine art, and children’s literature. A graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo, Tawfik is the founder and creative director of Majid Animation Production Studio. He has led artistic direction for notable animated series, including The Adventures of Fateen and Zakia Al-Zakia.
Tawfik’s extensive experience spans roles as a technical director and designer for animation projects, alongside a long tenure as a comics artist for Basim and Majid magazines. He won First Prize in Journalistic Comics at the Cairo International Comics Festival in 2016.
Co-founder of the award-winning TOK-TOK magazine, Tawfik has participated in international exhibitions, published works referenced in the Encyclopedia of Arab Caricature and Comic Artists, and collaborated with Harvard University on Middle Eastern comics. He also published Tawfik-Comics, a collection of his works spanning thirteen years.
Graphic Novels
Mohamed Ali | Egypt
Mohamed Ali is an accomplished Cairo-based art director and comic book artist with a Bachelor degree in Graphic Design and Illustration. His work spans various storytelling mediums, including children’s books, comics, editorial illustrations, and storyboards for both live-action and animated productions. He currently serves as an art director for an animation studio.
Ali has participated in numerous collective art exhibitions and was awarded the Angoulême Maison des Auteurs art residency in 2020. His comic work was featured in the 2018 Mahmoud Kahil Award annual book, and his contributions to animation have earned him two awards in Cairo and Dubai.
A published author, Ali has released two comic books, published consecutively in 2021 and 2022. His work continues to shape the fields of comics and animation, establishing him as a leading figure in contemporary visual storytelling.
Comics
Nour Haidar | Lebanon
Nour Haidar is a talented 24-year-old illustrator and comic book artist based in Beirut, a city rich with unique and inspiring stories. Her passion for the arts began in childhood, but it was during her studies at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts that she developed a deep interest in illustration and sequential storytelling.
Since then, Haidar has embarked on a diverse range of projects, exploring various mediums and styles with each new endeavor. Her artistic curiosity has driven her to experiment with different themes and techniques, always seeking to tell compelling stories through her work. Haidar believes that every image holds its own narrative, and her creations reflect this belief, capturing the essence of the stories that surround her.
Graphic Illustration
Sally Samir | Egypt
Sally Samir is an Egyptian visual artist and children’s book illustrator who graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo in 2011. Since 2014, she has dedicated herself to illustrating children’s books having worked on over 25 titles with publishing houses both in Egypt and internationally.
She has participated in various exhibitions and received notable recognition, including the State Encouragement Award in Arts for pre-school children’s book illustrations in 2022. Her book Where, Moon? won the Best Design and Production Award at the Lebanon International Book Fair.
Her creative and impactful approach to illustrations continues to shape the field of children’s literature, where she brings vibrant stories to life with every new project.
Chilldren’s Book Illustration
Shiroug Mohamed Ali Idris | Sudan
Shiroug is a talented artist based in Sudan, with over five years of experience as a freelance illustrator. She has worked on a diverse range of projects, including children’s books, animation, comics, and editorial illustrations.
Her work is deeply inspired by African folklore and mythology, with a strong emphasis on representing Afro-Arabian heritage. Through her illustrations, Shiroug seeks to highlight and preserve the rich narratives of her roots, creating art that resonates with both historical depth and contemporary relevance.
AMAAL KHATTAB
● The artist Amaal Khattab lived in the Sayyida Zeinab district, one of Cairo’s most historically and religiously significant neighborhoods.
● She completed her secondary education at Helmiya Secondary School for Girls before following her artistic passion to the Faculty of Applied Arts, where she graduated with distinction.
● In the early 1980s, Amaal Khattab had the opportunity to join the team of artists and illustrators at her favorite magazine, “Samir”
● There, she participated in drawing stories and coloring illustrations at her small desk, surrounded by fellow artists and creative collaborators, including Mohamed El-Tahamy and Alaa El-Saeed – the artist behind the redesign of Samir’s character in the early 1980s
● Her artistic and aesthetic maturity reached its peak in the 1990s, where she skillfully and professionally brought these iconic images to life, making Samir’s covers and pages vibrantly beautiful and full of life.
● Amaal Khattab was selected among 12 artists who applied for the position of replacing Samir’s illustrator. She proved her talent by illustrating Samir and his friend Tahtah for five years before leaving Egypt for Lebanon, where she helped establish Bisat Al-Reeh Magazine.
● In the United States, where she was hosted by Walt Disney in his studios.
● She continued working in illustration for 22 years thereafter.
● Amaal worked at Samir Magazine from the early 1980s until her retirement around 2017
Maamoul Press
Maamoul Press is a small press and collective working at the intersection of comics, printmaking, and book arts, fostering by-us for-us storytelling from marginalized communities through publishing, workshops, and more. We orient our work, and call on you, to refuse and resist zionist and imperialist hegemony everywhere, towards collective liberation.
Founded in 2019 in metro Detroit, Maamoul launched with an 8-week comics workshop that provided an intensive learning experience to local participants, as they created their own comics zines. Since then we have published numerous books, zines, and prints, curated the work of our artist members for exhibitions, and tabled at fairs across North America. Our work is by and for artists and communities from SWANA and other marginalized backgrounds, working against hostile publishing landscapes that seek to suppress and control our narratives. We are rooted in a collaborative and DIY ethos with a long tradition in printmaking and zine-making spaces, forging alternative, community-based modes of publishing, and sharing knowledge and skills through always free workshops and programs. Where possible we have directed proceeds to supporting various causes locally as well as in our homelands, with a focus since October 2023 on mutual aid efforts in Gaza, while also directly supporting Gazan artists through publishing their work. Find us at maamoulpress.com and @maamoulpress.
10th Mahmoud Kahil
Award 2025 Finalists
Naser Jaafari | Jordan
Karen Keyrouz | Lebanon
Tawfik | Egypt
Yousif Elamin | Sudan
Baraa Alawoor | Palestine
Meet the Jury
Sussi Bech
Denmark
Doaa Eladl
Egypt
Paul Gravett
UK
Maya Fidawi
Lebanon
George Khoury [JAD]
Lebanon
Her most notable work is the comic series about Nofret, which follows a girl navigating the political and religious intrigues of pharaoh Akhenaten’s reign. The final installment of the series was released in April 2022. In total, she has written and illustrated 34 comic books, including He Electrified the World, the best-selling Danish comic book of its year. Additionally, she has illustrated nearly 200 children’s books.
Bech has received all major Danish comics awards, and in 2015 was honored with the Adamson statuette from the Swedish Comics Academy in Stockholm. Her works have been exhibited 37 times in eight countries, including France and Germany.
More details can be found at: www.sussibech.dk
Doaa has participated in numerous exhibitions, and she has received numerous awards, including the Egyptian Syndicate of Journalists’ Best Cartoon (2009) and the Mustafa and Ali Amin prize (2015). In 2016, the BBC named her one of the most inspirational and influential women of the year. She later received the Mahmoud Kahil Award (2017) and (2024) both in the Editorial Cartoons category, was nominated by Cartoon Home Network International in Norway among the Top Ten Cartoonists in the world (2018), and won First Prize at the Women Cartoonist International Award (2020).
@doaa.eladl.cartoon
He has written, co-written, edited or contributed to more than twenty books on comics and has curated exhibitions at institutions such as The British Library, the National Comics Centre in Angoulême, The Centre Pompidou, and The Barbican Centre, where he organized the first exhibition of Asian Comics, currently touring museums in the USA.
His upcoming projects include curating for the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration, opening in London 2026, and contributing to a new museum of graphic narrative in Brussels. More details can be found at www.paulgravett.com.
@paul_gravett
In 2004, she illustrated her first book and has since illustrated over 44 books for publishers in Lebanon and internationally.
Fidawi has received nine national and international awards, including the Etisalat Children’s Book Award for Book of the Year (2014) and Best Illustrated Children’s Book (2017), as well as the 2nd Mahmoud Kahil Award in the Children’s Book Illustration category (2017). In 2024, she was nominated for the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award.
She has conducted illustration workshops in Brazil, Morocco, Italy, Turkey, UAE, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon. Based in Beirut, she runs regular workshops and is a part time instructor at AUB and ALBA, teaching both manual and digital illustration.
@mayafidawi
Jad has received several awards for his contributions to the field. His works A Thousand and One Nights and Shehrazade are part of the permanent collection at Le Musée de la Bande Dessinée (The International Comics Museum) in Angoulême, France.
georgeskhouryjad.com