Facts &
Figures
Arab
Countries
10
Number of
Submitions
250
Female
Participation
35%
3RD Mahmoud Kahil
Award Winners
March 2018
Editorial Cartoons
Sherif Arafa | Egypt
Sherif Arafa, born in April, 1980. Sherif holds an MBA in Human Resources, and is currently completing his MS Degree in Positive Psychology. He is an Egyptian editorial cartoonist, a self-development author at Alittihad Newspaper, a public speaker, and a dentist by degree. He changed his career path from dentistry to visual and print art in order to focus on achieving his vision of enhancing wellbeing awareness, fostering open-mindedness and tolerance, and opposing extremism. Read more
Graphic Novels
Seif Eddine Nechi | Tunisia
Seif Eddine Nechi, born in Tunis in June 1974. After receiving a Baccalaureate Diploma in Literature, Seifeddine pursued a degree in psychology. He worked for several years as advertising art director, then launched a satirical / political blog in 2009 that was censored in 2010. He co-founded the comics magazine Lab 619, as well as the comic blog Soubia with Aymen Mbarek. Read more
Comics
Mohamed Salah | Egypt
Salah graduated with Honors from the College of Fine Arts, Photography Department as valedictorian of the class of 2005. He identifies as a visual narrator who has moved across a multitude of visual communication disciplines since 2001. His journey began with comic strips and with visual arts, then shifted toward areas such as animation, caricature, editorial cartoons and advertising. Read more
Graphic Illustration
Tracy Chahwan | Lebanon
Graduated from ALBA University with a Masters in Comics and Illustration. Since moving back to Lebanon at the age of 19 and receiving her degree, she has worked on various projects, including comics, advertising, posters, illustration for online newspapers, and music visuals. Read more
Chilldren’s Book Illustration
Walid Taher | Egypt
Walid M.Taher, graduated from Helwan University in Egypt with a BSc in Fine Arts (Puppet Theatre), 1992. Since then, he worked as a Senior Art Director/ Illustrator at Dar El Shorouk Publishing, an Adjunct Professor of Illustration at The American University in Cairo (AUC) and was the Co-Founder and Art Director of Weladna. Read more
www.instagram.com/walidtahersadek
Naji AlAli
Naji Salim Hussein Al Ali was born between the cities of Nazareth and Tiberias in the northeastern Galilee of Palestine in 1936, in a village named Shajara. After the 1948 Nakba, saught refuge with his family in Lebanon, settling into the Ein El-Hilweh refugee camp near Saida. He later joined the vocational department at a technical institute in Tripoli, Lebanon, from which he graduated in 1953. His artistic tendencies began to emerge when he wrote and acted in short plays with his colleagues in the camp and at some clubs. These tendencies and artistic talents only grew as he left Lebanon and lived abroad, far from his family and friends. From 1957-1959, Naji worked as a technician in a Saudi Arabian company in Jeddah, returning to Lebanon to join the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts in 1960, but continuous prosecutions and arrests by Lebanese Intelligence Forces disrupted his studies. Read more
FIBDA
Samandal Association is a volunteer-based NGO dedicated to the advancement of the art of comics. Founded in 2007, Samandal has published a variety of books and hosted a number of workshops and events at both the national and international levels. The collective favors the singular voice of the artist, graphic and narrative experiments, and research that questions language. Its publications are read in several languages, from right to left as from left to right, each time, with a new way of laying out translations. Today, alongside the annual collective publications, Samandal is planning to expand its publishing catalogue and publish graphic novels, author’s books and children’s comics. Samandal Association recently won the East London Comics and Arts Festival audience award (2018) and the prestigious Angoulême Alternative Comics Award (2019).Read more
4th Mahmoud Kahil
Award 2019 Finalists
Fares Korra Bet| Syria
Osama Hajjaj | Jordan
Mostafa Youssef | Egypt
Deena Mohamed | Egypt
Karen Keyrouz | Lebanon
Abir Gasmi | Tunisia
Maya Fidawi | Lebanon
Muhammad Mustafa |Egypt
Mona Yakzan | Lebanon
Hassan Manasrah | Jordan
Meet the Jury
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Louise Larsen
Denmark
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Ali Mandalawi
Iraq
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Lena Merhej
Lebanon
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Martin Rowson
UK
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Rym Mokhtari
Algeria
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George Khoury
Lebanon
Louise C. Larsen is an art historian, Mag.art. She is a co-founder of the Danish Museum on Cartooning at the Royal Library, Copenhagen (2000), and has facilitated the transition to make the Storm P. Museum the home of comics in Denmark (2010/11) at the board of the Danish Comics Council. She is a member of the Nordic Network of Comics Research (NNCORE). She has initiated databases on museum archives at Statens Museum for Kunst, Cph. and the Painting Collection at Nivaagaard as well as made a prototype for a database on cartooning with the archive on Hans Bendix at the Royal Library, Cph. She has written extensively on cartooning, and is known for her publications Samling med egen Rembrandt (2006), Tegnere tegner tegnere (2017).
Ali Mandalawi was born in Mandali, Iraq in 1958. He graduated with a B.S. from the Academy of Fine Arts, Baghdad in 1986, and with a diploma from the Institute of Fine Arts, Baghdad in 1997. He has illustrated more than forty children’s books, and worked for Al-Araby Al-Sagheer, Majid, and Majalati Magazines. He has also held ten solo exhibitions and participated in multiple local and international exhibitions and festivals. He won First Prize at the African Arabic Cartoon Exhibition, Egypt in 1990, Great Prize at the 14th International Festival Mihai Aonesco in 2015, and First Prize at George Al- Bahjoory Cont in 2016.
www.kerbaj.com
Lena Merhej is a Lebanese comic artist, visual storyteller and an expert in graphic narration. She currently teaches at Lebanese International University, and is the founder and director of the Story Center, which offers professional training in animation, illustration, and comic books. She is also a co-founder of, and an active editor and collaborator in Samandal, a comics organization in Lebanon. Lena Merhej has exhibited her work both locally and internationally, and has received the FIBDA award for Best Arabic Comics dealing with occupation, war and conflict.
Martin Rowson is a multi-award winning British political cartoonist, illustrator, and writer. His work appears regularly in The Guardian and The Daily Mirror, as well as many other publications. His books include graphic novel adaptions of “Gulliver’s Travels” and “The Waste Land,” as well as a memoir about clearing out his late parents’ house. In addition to being chair of the British Cartoonists’ Association, he is also currently the vice-president of the Zoological Society of London and a trustee of the London Cartoon Museum. He and his wife, their pets and, when they’re passing by, their children live in London.
https://www.joanbaz.com/
Rym was born in 1979, and works and lives in Algeria. While pursuing her degree in graphic design at the Fine Arts School of Algiers (ESBA), she took interest in comics from a theoretical perspective: The codes of comics (2006), Narrative articulations in comics (2014). She is a founding member of the comics blog 12 Tours (2009), and collaborated on the first issues of the comics journal El Bendir. She publishes her short stories in the collective book Monsters (Dalimen, 2011), La Bouche du Monde, and TokTok. She has participated in several festivals and exhibits about comics, including FIBDA, Angoulême, Cairo Comix, Fumetto Festival of Lucerne, Artifariti, Erlangen’s Festival, Swarthmore College, and Tazarka’s Festival. She is currently a teacher of typography and graphic design at ESBA.