Tunisian actress becomes first Arab woman to join Venice Film Festival jury

Tunisian actress Hend Sabri just made history after becoming the first Arab woman to be selected as a jury member at the Venice International Film Festival. 

In an Instagram post of the announcement, Sabri expressed both pride and joy in being given the chance to become a juror at the 76th edition of the world's oldest film festival. 

"I am proud to be one of the jury members of a competition at the Venice Film Festival. I feel more proud that veteran directors Emir Kusturica and Antonietta De Lillo - who was nominated for the Golden Lion award at the festival in 1997 - are presiding this jury section," she wrote.

"I hope that I'll be a good ambassador of Arab art at the oldest festival in the world which is considered as one of the three most important festivals ever," she added. 

Sabri is now a juror of the Luigi De Laurentiis Award for a Debut Film which is chaired by Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica. Italian director Antonietta De Lillo and American film producer Michael J. Werner are also jurors in the same category.

Sabri was born in 1979 in Kebli, Tunisia. She holds a bachelor's degree in law degree and a master's degree in intellectual property and copyright law. 

Her acting career was launched in 1994 after she starred in the Tunisian film Samt El Qosour (The Silence of the Palaces), a feature directed by Moufida Tlatli. In 2000, she took on a role in another titled helmed by Tlatli, a film called The Season of Men. In 2001, she made her Egyptian cinema debut in Mozakerat Morahka (The Diary of a Teenager), a film directed by filmmaker Inas El-Degheidy. 

The feature catapulted her into fame and marked the beginning of a successful career in Egyptian television and cinema. 

Saudi filmmaker Shahad Ameen is set to debut her first feature film - Scales (Sayidat Al-Bahr) - at the Venice International Film Festival's Critics' Week competition next month. 

Set in a dystopian landscape, the film tells the story of a young girl named Hayat who stands up to her family in a bid to overturn a village tradition. In her town, families sacrifice female children to mysterious creatures inhabiting local waters. 

The feature is both directed and written by Ameen, who is known for her short film Eye & Mermaid — which premiered at the Dubai Film Festival in 2013. 

Another Arab film set to make its mark at the festival is Lebanese feature All This Victory. Directed by Ahmad Ghossein, the drama is set in 2006 — the year the country witnessed a war with Israel. 

A co-production between Lebanon, France, and Germany, the film tells the story of Marwan, a son searching for his father after the latter refused to leave his village during the summer war. 

This year's Venice International Film Festival opens on Aug. 28 and runs until Sept. 7.