Beri Shalmashi

In 2008 Beri graduated from the Netherlands Film Academy in Amsterdam,  as scriptwriter and director. She followed a master’s degree in directing at the Utrecht School of the Arts. That same year, she won the ECHO Award, a national incentive prize for excellent multicultural talent in higher education, which allowed her to spend a summer at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). After living in Los Angeles for a while, she moved to Cairo. She made several short films at both destinations.
As a filmmaker she has worked with Sanne Vogel and Willem Capteyn, among others, for the television film Mama (nominated for a Golden Calf in 2010) and the screenplay for the book adaptation of Kader Abdolah’s The House of the Mosque. In 2012, she traced her roots to Iraqi Kurdistan, to teach at Salahaddin University in Erbil, the capital of the region, and worked on new films. She returned to Amsterdam several times for projects, including the short film Shouted from the Rooftops. In 2020 she made the interactive installation Big Village, about the place where her family has fled. In addition to her film work, Beri interviews female directors for the Filmkrant and writes for the Volkskrant about the conflicts in the Middle East.

Beri Shalmashi is moderator for the workshop Multiple Voices – Inclusivity in Storytelling, programmer of and speaker at the masterclass Production for Generation Inclusion 2021 and mentor pf Vrijplaats participants Louis Hothothot and Isis Cabolet.