The LatinArab International Film Festival has revealed the jury members of its 9th edition that is set to go virtual this year. The list includes Maher Diab, Creative Director and Managing Partner of MAD Solutions and Arab Cinema Center (ACC), within the newly launched section, Latin American Features Competition.

Alongside Diab, the jury includes a number of female directors; Suha Araj (Palestine), Darine Hotait and Mary Jirmanus Saba from Lebanon along with Argentinian film critic Ramiro Sozini.

The LatinArab International Film Festival (October 16-19) is the sole festival in the region that connects Latin America to the Arab world through cinema, in addition to being the main tool of cultural exchange between the two regions. Through regular competitions and screenings, the festival celebrates the diversity of voices and the abundance of innovative windows that open up to the real lives of people, society and cities through cinema that dreams of the reality of the two regions and portrays it in ways ranging from sharpness to clarity and poeticism.

Maher Diab has been previously selected as a jury member at various film festivals and events, including the Feature Documentary Panel at the BBC Arabic Festival and the main competition of the Cape Town International Film Market & Festival (CTIFMF).

In 2010, Maher Diab co-founded MAD Solutions, the first pan-Arab studio dedicated to the promotion and distribution of Arabic content to the Arab world and beyond. His creative vision is summoning in a new era of visualizing the Arab film and Entertainment industry, ranking it amongst its international peers. In 2015, through MAD Solutions, Diab co-founded the Arab Cinema Center (ACC), an international promotional platform for Arab cinema as it provides the filmmaking industry with a professional window to connect with their counterparts from all over the world through a number of events that it organizes.