Ibtisam Mara’ana-Menuhin, Israeli Arab screenwriter, film andTV producer, and media professional

Arab-Israeli screenwriter, movie and television director, and media personality. Mara’ana is a movie and television screenwriter, director, and producer. She is the owner of Ibtisam Films, a production company. She was born in the town of Faradis near Zichron Yaakov to Hitham and Sallah Mara’ana, a traditional Muslim family. She is a graduate of the Givat Haviva Film School and earned a B.A. and teacher’s certification at the David Yellin College of Education in Jerusalem. In 2010, she started teaching film in the Screen Arts Department and the Photography Department at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem. Mara’ana makes documentaries in which she sheds light on the internal discourse of Israel’s Arab society and presents the struggles of Israeli Arabs who live as a minority in this country, while simultaneously criticizing deep-seated customs of Arab society and its oppression and inequality. Among her films are Write down, I’m an Arab (2014), 77 Steps (2010), Lady Kul el-Arab (2008), A Room in Tel Aviv (2007), Three Times Divorced (2007), Badal (2006), Al-Jisr (2004), Paradise Lost (2003), and Waking Up to Homeland (1977) [there is no film in her various online bios with any such or similar name, and in 1977 she’d have been a year old.