Introduction: auteur directors, political dissent, and cultural critique / Josef Gugler -- Nabil Maleh: Syria's leopard (Syria) / Christa Salamandra -- Jocelyne Saab: a lifetime journey in search of freedom and beauty (Lebanon) / Dalia Said Mostafa -- Michel Khleifi: filmmaker of memory (Palestine) / Tim Kennedy -- Elia Suleiman: narrating negative space (Palestine) / Refqa Abu-Remaileh -- Youssef Chahine: devouring mimicries or juggling with self and other (Egypt) / Viola Shafik -- Daoud Abd El-Sayed: parody and borderline existence (Egypt) / Viola Shafik -- Yousry Nasrallah: the pursuit of autonomy in the Arab and European film markets (Egypt) / Benjamin Geer -- Mohamed Chouikh: from anticolonial commemoration to a cinema of contestation (Algeria) / Guy Austin -- Merzak Allouache: (self-)censorship, social critique, and the limits of political engagement in contemporary Algerian cinema (Algeria) / Will Higbee -- Nabil Ayouch: transgression, identity, and difference (Morocco) / Jonathan Smolin.
