Biography
Filmmaker and author Alia Yunis’ storytelling engages with heritage and transcultural memory, particularly in relation to land and food.
Her feature documentary, The Golden Harvest (2019), had its world premiere at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival (2019) and won the Best of the Fest at the Minneapolis St Paul International Film Festival (2019) and Finger Lake Environmental Film Festival in New York (2022). In 2010, Yunis co-founded the Zayed University Middle East Film Festival (ZUMEFF), now the longest running film festival in the UAE.
A PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow, Yunis’ fiction and nonfiction work have appeared in numerous books, magazines and anthologies. Her debut novel, The Night Counter (Crown/Random House, 2010) was critically acclaimed by the Washington Post and the Boston Entertainment Weekly.
Yunis is currently a Visiting Associate Professor of Film and Heritage Studies at NYU Abu Dhabi. She has an MA in Film from American University in Washington, DC and a PhD in Heritage and Memory Studies from the University of Amsterdam.