Alia Ayman makes and curates film and video and lives between Cairo and New York City. She is the co-founder of Zawya, an art-house cinema in Cairo and a doctoral candidate in sociocultural anthropology at New York University. She is a programming consultant for Berlinale Forum, The International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam (IDFA), BlackStar Film Festival and a programmer for the Arab Women Film Festival in Brazil. She has previously curated programs for Images Festival in Toronto, Flaherty NYC and Arsenal Institute for Film and Video in Berlin among others.