Behind the Rainbow

Jihan El-Tahri was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and is an award-winning writer/director and producer. She received her MA in political science from the American University in Cairo. From 1984 to 1990, she worked as a news correspondent covering politics in the Middle East with U.S. News and World Report and Reuters. She has produced and directed numerous documentaries, her most recent being the award winning and Emmy-nominated House of Saud (BBC/ARTE/PBS/NHK). Other films include: the ARTE documentary Price of Aid, The Tragedy of the Great Lakes (Canal +/ ARTE), and the six-part series Israel and the Arabs (BBC 2), for which she also co-authored the accompanying book, published by Penguin.

Steven Markovitz runs Big World Cinema (BWC) along with Platon Trakoshis. BWC was established in 1994, and has produced a number of award-winning fiction films and documentaries. Recent documentary projects include executive producing the 13-part series Project 10: Real Stories from a Free South Africa (Sundance, Berlin, Hot Docs, Tribeca, IDFA); The Tap (2003 Best South African Documentary: Apollo Festival and Stone Awards); and It’s My Life, an award-winning film sold to multiple territories including BBC/ARTE/Sundance. BWC’s fiction projects include Inja (Oscar nomination, 2003), Husk (Cannes competition, 1999), Proteus (Berlin, Toronto, 2003), and Boy Called Twist (Cannes, 2005). Big World Cinema also co-founded and runs Encounters South African International Documentary Festival.