Facts &
Figures
Arab
Countries
15
Number of
Submissions
400
Female
Participation
45%
Editorial Cartoons
Doaa Eladl | Egypt
Doaa El Adl is an Egyptian cartoonist born in Dumiat, who graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, department of theater and film. Doaa worked as a political cartoonist at Al Dostour and Sabah El Kheir newspapers, and Rose Al Youssef magazine, and currently works at Al Masry Al Youm newspaper. Her work is published on international platforms such as Cartoon Movement, Iran Cartoon, and the United Arab Emirates’ daily “Al-Ro’ya”. Doaa participated in numerous exhibitions both in Egypt and internationally, including France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Denmark and Tunisia. She won several local and international awards including the Egyptian Syndicate of Journalists award for Best Cartoon in 2009, The Mustafa and Ali Amin prize in 2015, and a number of international awards from Italy and France. Doaa was listed by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) as one of the most inspirational and influential women of 2016, and received the 2017 Mahmoud Kahil Award in the category of Editorial Cartoons. She was nominated by Cartoon Home Network International in Norway among the Top Ten Cartoonists in the world in 2018, and received the First Prize of the Women Cartoonist International Award In 2020 from United Sketches.
Graphic Novels
Joseph Kai | Lebanon
Joseph Kai is a Lebanese author and artist currently living in Paris, exploring the realms of realistic and speculative fiction. Kai’s debut graphic novel L’Intranquille (Casterman, 2021), recently released as Restless in English by Street Noise Books (US), delves into the anxious behavior, sexual desires and dreams of Samar, a queer artist living in Lebanon during one of the country’s most tumultuous periods in history. In 2010, Joseph Kai became a contributing member of Samandal, publishing several short works and later taking on the role of editor in chief for Geography in 2015, 3000 in 2020, and Cutes, a collection of queer and trans* comics in 2023. Kai has participated in numerous festivals and exhibitions around the world, most recently Les Révolutions de l’Amour at L’Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris and his first solo exhibition titled I Never Asked to Be So Sad and So Sexy at TWXS in Brussels.
Comics
Ahmed Esam | Iraq
Ahmed Esam graduated from the College of Fine Arts, Department of Plastic Arts at the University of Baghdad, in 2021. He has been working as a graphic designer for years, and participated in several art exhibitions inside Iraq, in addition to his experimentation in the field of comics and poster design.
Graphic Illustration
Amira ElTanany | Egypt
Amira El Tanany is an Egyptian visual artist, illustrator and graphic designer born and raised in KSA in 1989, and received her BFA, MFA, and Ph.D. from Helwan University’s prestigious faculty of Fine Arts, Graphic Design department, in Cairo, Egypt in 2012. She is currently a teaching assistant at the same university and working as a freelance Illustrator.
While Amira focuses on contemporary art, digital print, and mixed media, her work explores sensitive, social, and psychological themes of perception, memory, society, environmental sustainability, and simulation of the future and the past, and recently started to focus on folkloric Egyptian life.
Amira won first place in two awards: the Nasser Bin Hamad International Youth Creativity award from Bahrain (2021), presented by the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for her artistic environmental awareness, and the Behance Digital Painting award in 2015 in Egypt.
Her artworks have been exhibited in three solo exhibitions in Egypt, and numerous collaborative exhibitions such as the Contemporary Egyptian Art Exhibition in South Africa, and the Art for Peace “Postal Art” in Armenia, and the Digital Festival Bibliotheca Alexandrina, among others.
Chilldren’s Book Illustration
Zeineb Ben Haouala | Tunisia
Zeineb Ben Haouala is a Tunisian-Swiss artist born in Lausanne in 1982. She studied graphic design at the École Supérieure of Design in Tunisia, where she obtained a master’s degree in research in 2009. After working in advertising and media for over ten years, Zeineb shifted her career path and pursued training in Cultural Management.
In 2017, Zeineb co-founded the illustration studio Glibett with a friend, and since then has been involved in several group exhibitions, conducted workshops, and organized events focused on illustration.
In 2019, she published her first book with Kalimat publishing house, and was selected to participate in the Sharjah Children’s Book Fair in 2021. Her second book “Why?” centered around the environment was published in 2023.
WALID TAHER
Walid Taher was born in 1969 and graduated from the faculty of Fine Arts at Helwan University in 1992, with a Bachelor’s of Science in Fine Arts, specializing in set design.
In addition to writing, illustrating, and publishing 70 children’s books with Egyptian, Arab and European publishing houses, Taher worked in the field of illustrative journalism with various Egyptian journals prior to his graduation, and was an art director at Dar Al Shorouk publishing house from 2000 to 2016. Taher is an active member of the Egyptian syndicates of Journalists and Visual Artists.
Taher’s artworks have been shown in several group and solo exhibitions in his home country and abroad. Taher received numerous international awards including the prestigious Etisalat Prize for Children’s Arabic Literature 2010-2016, the pan-Arab Mahmoud Kahil Award in 2018, and was shortlisted for both the Carnet de Voyage award in 2018, and the Sheikh Zayed Award in 2016. He received the International Children’s Book Award at Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival (SCRF) in 2014, the Bologna Children’s Book Fair Honor list in 2004, the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate’s first prize in 2004 and 2006, and won first prize from the Egyptian Council for Children’s books in 2002.
Taher was granted a three-year art residency in France in 2016 by Le port a jauni publishing house, and continues to produce creative projects with the publishing house.
Alifbata
Alifbata is an associative publishing house established in Marseilles, France, in 2015, that specializes in publishing French translations of graphic novels and comics created by authors and artists from the Arab world. With fifteen publications to date, Alifbata has actively introduced to France and Europe an emerging artistic scene from the region, spanning from Morocco to Syria, including Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Palestine.
The Alifbata catalogue includes comics and graphic novels by young emerging authors as well as classic works, collective works, and academic studies on comics in the region.
Furthermore, Alifbata organizes writers’ residencies in Marseilles, and promotes its publications and authors at literary and comics festivals in France and internationally. It also arranges roundtables, conferences, and training workshops on Arab comics at bookstores, libraries, universities, and art schools.
To ensure the broadest distribution of this innovative literary form, the association has developed a copyright transfer policy to facilitate the translation of its publications into other languages across European countries. Alifbata also pursues partnerships with publishers from the Maghreb and the Middle East, aiming to nurture the growth of the ‘ninth art’ in the southern Mediterranean region.
9th Mahmoud Kahil
Award 2024 Finalists
Ahmad Rahma | Jordan
Kamal Zakour & Abir Gasmi | Algeria
Joseph Kai | Lebanon
Aliaa Abou Khaddour | Syria
Sonia Ben Salem | Tunisia
Meet the Jury
Nacha Vollenweider
Argentina
Mohamad Salah
Egypt
Hélène Becquelin
Switerland
Hanane Kai
Lebanon
George Khoury [JAD]
Lebanon
@nacha_vollenweider
Salah worked in a multitude of areas of storytelling and visual communication since 2002; starting out with comics and painting, before venturing into other mediums such as animation, editorial cartoons, illustration and advertising.
His work has been published in several Egyptian periodicals and magazines such as Samir and Toktok. He has also taken part in numerous comics exhibitions, workshops, and residencies in Egypt, the Arab region, and Europe.
Salah is the winner of the CairoComix Grand Prix (2018), and of the 3rd and 7th Mahmoud Kahil Award in the Comics category (2018 and 2022).
@_abusalah_
After obtaining her diploma in graphic design at the Lausanne School of Art, she practiced her profession for several years in advertising, first in agencies, then as a freelancer for various clients and museums.
She returned to comics after the birth of her children in order to tell the story of her life as a mother in the comics blog “Angry Mum”, which was adapted and then published by Glénat.
A few years later, she evoked, in 3 autobiographical graphic novels, her childhood in “Adieu les enfants”, then her punk adolescence in “1979”, published by Antipodes.
She received the BDZOOM 1st prize in 2022 for “1979”, and was also a finalist in 2023 with “Le Colibri”, her latest graphic novel which received the Swiss Children’s Book Prize spring 2023.
The Comics Heritage Fund in Lausanne preserves part of her archives, and she had received the ArtPro Grant for encouragement of cultural activities in Valais in 2021.
helenebecquelin.ch
In addition to her design work, Hanane is a children’s book illustrator with 24 published books, four of which have been translated into 20 languages. She has won several awards, including the Bologna Ragazzi (New Horizons) and the Etisalat Children’s Books Award. When not working, you might find Hanane looking for the best batata sandwich, feeding her cat hummus, or reading about what makes humans human.
hanane.me
georgeskhouryjad.com