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MAYA SANBAR

Film Director and Producer

Maya has been making feature films and documentaries for over 10 years. She is passionate about crossing communication boundaries using stories and images. She is both a Director and a Producer specialising in independent films, most of which have premiered at the Cannes, Sundance or Berlin International Film Festivals before making their way through festivals around the world.

As a graduate of International Law and Diplomacy, Maya is fluent in six languages (French, Arabic, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian). After an initial career in law, Maya became the Head of Worldwide Advertising for HSBC Global before later joining Three, a UK based video telecommunications giant, as their Director of Partnership Development. She was appointed Director of Mobile Marketing to Tony Blair's Cabinet Office for a year before embarking on a full-time film career in 2004. She has always specialised in start-ups, be it setting up a new company, or a new section within a larger group, and is always enthusiastic about being a motor for positive change.

Having filmed in many different places with various cultural inclinations, she is used to adjusting to an ever-changing environment. Her work with UNESCO and Mother Theresa has enabled her to experience firsthand people’s ability to make the most of their lives with a little help. Her current work with the Madrinha Trust helps educate underprivileged bright children in both Africa and the Middle East, a region she is passionate about.

She is seen as an expert in stimulating cross-cultural understanding through film, and is currently writing a chapter of a new book on Middle East Cinema that will be published in November 2014. She has been interviewed on a number of radio and television channels including BBC World, MBC, CNN and Al Jazeera International.

Maya was born in Beirut and is of Palestinian-Lebanese descent. She has spent most of her life living between France, Brazil and the UK, where she currently resides. She has spent much time in Gaza and the West Bank and endeavours to promote cross-cultural understanding and versatility in thinking through challenges faced by the people she encounters.

Filmography:

Hope (2004)

Frontline Football (2005)

Goal Dreams (2006)

Trouble the Water (2008)

Salt of this Sea (2008)

The Time that Remains (2009)

Mapping Beirut (2010)

When I Saw You (2012)

The Muslims are Coming! (2013)

The Narrow Frame of Midnight (2014)

She is an experienced and well-known speaker about how film can affect positive change, and she was recently on a panel in South Africa together with Bob Geldof, Boris Becker, Richard Branson, Christine Ockrent and Fatima Bhutto, photos of which are below courtesy of the One Young World summit 2013.







Interview segment:

“I have been passionate about films ever since I was a child. My brothers and sister would say I was a strange one to enjoy black and white movies on television at the age of 12 when they wanted to switch to cartoons, and I would even sit down with our grandmother to watch Egyptian film drama for hours on end! My granny is today 105 years old and she still recites poetry. I suppose a longing for an alternative vision of life runs in my veins, and I must say that the medium of film has allowed me ways of expressing ideas through images that can sometimes go beyond words.

I first became truly aware of the power of images when I headed the worldwide advertising department of HSBC bank. I had to come up with a campaign that was both local and global so we used symbols and easy to understand pictures that crossed borders, cultures and languages. I also worked with great film directors for the campaign and I suppose that it was at this stage that I became convinced of the power of the moving image to shift mentalities in a radical and simple way.

My motivation behind every film I have made is to bring light to an issue I feel passionate about, and do so through a touching human story that anyone can relate to. My experience is that everyone has a story to tell, and if that story is told with naked emotional truth, then it can touch others anywhere else in the world and contribute to a better understanding of one another – which can only be a positive step towards achieving unconditional compassion and ultimately world peace!”

Here below is a BBC interview relating to one of the films Maya directed. It was during filming for this that she first went to Qatar in 2004, and the film actually ends there in one of the state-of-the-art stadiums that had been built at the time. Qatar kindly became the "Home" for Palestine to play their World Cup qualifying home match as they were not able to do a home match in Gaza or the West Bank due to clear safety issues raised by FIFA at the time.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5049878.stm



World Cup Inshallah, a film following the difficult formation, training and World Cup qualifying attempts of the Palestinian national team, will receive its UK premiere in London on Thursday.



Of all the teams that battled it out on the pitch to qualify for this year's World Cup, the Palestinian national team had its own particular conflict to endure.

Made up of a disparate group of players from the occupied territories, Lebanon, Kuwait, Chile and the United States, it was only recognised by Fifa in 1996 and has so far failed to qualify for any major international tournaments.

"Sport is the only context in which you can officially refer to 'Palestine'," says the film's co-director Maya Sanbar, who shared the role with her business partner Jeffrey Saunders.

"In football and in the Olympics, you have the word 'Palestine', but even in the United Nations, it's referred to as the 'Palestinian Authority'."

Palestinian-Lebanese Sanbar chose to follow the squad as a way to "tell the story of the team, but also of Palestinians and the different types of Palestinians that exist out there. The idea is to break stereotypes".

Escaping politics 

The concept for the film was first seen in an episode of BBC Two's Frontline Football series, which followed teams in conflict zones as they assembled their hopeful World Cup teams.

Sanbar approached the BBC with the idea of following the Palestinian team, and later co-produced the episode.

But when filming was over, she was left wanting to know more.

"I decided I wanted to do something that was more in depth and get to know the characters a little bit more," she says.

"I decided to spend more time with the players and get to understand better their lives, and through their lives tell the story of the team."

Originally hoping the film would be "non-political", it soon became clear to her that politics is never far from the surface for Palestinians.

"When you do something about Palestine, you can't get away from politics. It's always political one way or the other," she says.

Palestinian-American player Morad Fareed echoes that thought: "It's hard to just focus on the football. You try but it's hard because there's so much going on around you, always."

For players like Fareed, joining the Palestinian national team is a chance to experience the culture he only ever heard his parents talk about.

For others, like the players from the occupied territories and Lebanese refugee camps, it is a new arena in which to play out the struggles they face every day.



Team spirit 

Looking unsentimentally at the team's training season, the film reveals an almost comically absurd string of bad luck and mounting obstacles.

Players from Gaza must wait weeks for the Rafah border - then controlled by Israel - to open to join their team-mates in Egypt, and the team is forced to cancel a training camp in Hungary.

With no dedicated pitch, the squad must play their crucial "home" match in a virtually empty stadium in Qatar.

At one point, the tragedies of the conflict spill on to the pitch as the Gaza players reveal that five of their friends were killed that morning in an Israeli air strike.

For some, the strain is too much.

Fares Abu-Shawish, the team's logistics manager, suffers a heart attack mid-way through the film and sits out the rest of the season in hospital.

Fifa deputy general secretary Jerome Champagne sums up the team's difficulties when he rejects their request to reschedule their crucial qualifying match, declaring simply "football cannot go faster than politics".

But despite their setbacks, the immense challenges facing the team also help to unite them.

As World Cup Inshallah is screened in London, a feature-length version of the film, entitled Goal Dreams, will be simultaneously screened in New Orleans and projected on the wall Israel has built around east Jerusalem separating it from the West Bank.

And with broadcasts already secured on major French, German and US TV stations, Sanbar is currently negotiating a high-profile UK broadcast.

"For me on a personal level I learned a lot about how people live and it was a real journey of discovery," she says.