Naila and the Uprising

Julia Bacha is a Peabody and Guggenheim award-winning filmmaker and the Creative Director at Just Vision, an organization that fills a media gap on Israel-Palestine through independent storytelling and strategic audience engagement. Since graduating Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University, she has strategically used documentary film to foster constructive conversations on some of the most divisive issues of our times. Julia started her filmmaking career in Cairo, where she wrote and edited Control Room (2004), for which she was nominated for the Writer’s Guild of America Award. Control Room became one of the highest-grossing political documentaries of all time and introduced Americans for the first time to the inner workings of the Arab satellite channel, Al Jazeera Subsequently, she moved to Jerusalem where she co-directed, wrote, and edited Encounter Point (2006), which followed Palestinians and Israelis who risked their lives and public standing to promote an end to the occupation and the conflict. Encounter Point premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, won the best documentary prize at the San Francisco Film Festival, and was broadcast on Al Arabiya to millions of viewers.