The management of the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) announced a new team to be in charge of the Forum Expanded segment of the festival.

The Kuwaiti artist and curator Ala Younis will be heading the segment together with Ulrich Ziemons, while Egyptian artist Maha Maamoun is among the curatorial committee. The are also joined by Shai Heredia (India), Karina Griffith (Guyana-Canada).

Forum Expanded are programmes independently curated and organised by Arsenal - Institute for Film and Video Art as part of the Berlin International Film Festival

Younis and Ziemons are replacing Stefanie Schulte Strathaus who headed the Forum Expanded for 16 editions.

Ala Younis is an artist with curatorial, film and publishing projects. Since 2012, Younis has collaborated with Arsenal - Institute for Film and Video Art on researching, presenting and publishing on film archives and collections in Berlin, Cairo, Amman and Dresden. Younis has been a member of the advisory board of Forum Expanded since 2013, and co-curated the exhibition for the Archival Assembly #1 in 2021. 

Maha Maamoun is an artist, curator and independent publisher based in Cairo. She is a founding board member of the Contemporary Image Collective (CiC), an independent non-profit space for art and culture founded in Cairo in 2004. She co-founded with Ala Younis the independent publishing platform Kayfa ta in 2013. Maha is a member of the curatorial team of Forum Expanded (Berlinale), and the Akademie der Künste der Welt, Cologne.

The Berlin International Film Festival's 71st edition took place in two parts, May and June 2021, in an unusual format (online and physical events) due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The dates of the upcoming 72nd edition of Berlinale are yet to be revealed by the festival's organisers.

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