Mike Elsherif

Mike Elsherif is an award-winning Palestinian-American filmmaker who immigrated to America from Kuwait following the Persian Gulf War. His films deal with themes of displacement, mortality, and the immigrant experience and have been screened at national and international film festivals, including Sundance, El Gouna, and Cucalorus. He was recently awarded the Islamic Scholarship Fund's inaugural Shireen Abu Akleh Memorial Award. He also received the Sunbird Stories Production Award by FilmLab Palestine and Cinephilia Productions and the 40 Under 40 Prize by the Arab America Foundation. He's been a Rawi Fellow at the Rawi Screenwriters Lab in Jordan held by the Royal Film Commission, an Al Smith Fellow selected by the Kentucky Arts Council, Fund for the Art's ArtsMatch recipient, a Writer-in-Residence at The New Harmony Project, a COLLIDER Artist-in-Residence through the Louisville Free Public Library, and an Artist-in-Residence at Bernheim Forest and Arboretum. Mike is a graduate of the University of North Carolina - School of the Arts School of Filmmaking with a concentration in Film Directing.