Biography Irit Neidhhardt

Irit Neidhardt was born in Germany in 1969 and brought up in Germany and Israel/Palestine; now she based in Berlin/Germany. Since 1995 she is teaching and curating in the field of Middle Eastern cinemas. She was managing an adult education centre in Germany and teaching (Hebrew) at SOAS (School for Oriental and African Studies) in London before founding mec film in 2002.

mec film (middle eastern cinemas) is a distribution and consultancy company for films exclusively from the Middle East. The German theatrical catalogue includes films like RANA’S WEDDING by Hany Abu Assad (Palestine), ROUTE 181 by Michel Khleifi and Eyal Sivan (France/Belgium/GB/Germany), ATASH by Tawfik Abu Wael (Israel/Palestine) or NEWS FROM HOME by Amos Gitai (Israel/France/Belgium). In the World Sales mec film distributes Annemarie Jacir’s LIKE TWENTY IMPOSSIBLES (Palestine), Hala Alabdallah’s I AM THE ONE WHO BIRNGS FLOWERS TO HER GRAVE (Syria/France), Tawfik Abu Wael’s DIARY OF A MALE WHORE (Palestine), Dana Goldberg’s ALPHA (Israel) and others.

Irit is associate producer of Mahmoud al Massad’s award winning feature-documentary RECYCLE (Jordan/Netherlands/Germany/Switzerland/France/USA) and co-producer of Simon el-Habre’s Hot Docs winner THE ONE MAN VILLAGE (Lebanon). She worked as consultant for Tamer el-Said’s THE LAST DAYS OF THE CITY (Egypt) as well as for the cinematic adaption of Sayed Kashua’s highly acclaimed novel LET IT BE MORNING (Palestine/France).

She is editor of the books “We are the Good Ones. Antisemitism in Germany’s Radical Left.” (with Willi Bishof) and “Living with the Conflict?! Reports and Analyses from Leftists in Palestine and Israel.” With contributions by Tanya Reinhard, Ella Shohat, Azza El-Hassan, Nabila Espanioly and others (both books are German-language only) and author of various articles on subjects related to cinema and the Middle East.

In 2004 Irit was awarded with governmental business award “unternehmerinnen-brief” for the growth concept of mec film.

Working languages are German, English and Hebrew; Arabic and French are possible with cut backs.