Faiza Saleh Ambah

Faiza Ambah is a Saudi filmmaker and the writer & director of MARIAM, a medium length film about a veiled Muslim teenager in 2004 France who must choose between removing her hijab or getting expelled from school when a law is pased prohibiting religious symbols in public school. The film won the Special Jury Prize at it’s world premiere at the Dubai International Film Festival in December, 2015.

A pioneer of female journalism in Saudi Arabia, Faiza was the first woman to interview politicians and prominent social figures for Arab News and opened the way for female journalists in Saudi newsrooms. Later, she became a correspondent for American news outlets such as The Associated Press and the The Christian Science Monitor. She became Gulf Correspondent for The Washington Post before deciding to focus on filmmaking in 2009.

Faiza served as a jury member at the Gulf Film Festival in Dubai in 2013, and helped organize a festival of Gulf films at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, France the same year.

Her script A Reverence for Spiders has been supported by the Sundance Institute, the Rawi Screenwriter’s Lab in Jordan, the Doha Film Institute. It was also chosen for the Dubai Film Connection at the 2013 Dubai International Film Festival and was an IWC award finalist.

Faiza obtained a feature film-writing certificate from UCLA Extension and has been trained in directing at both the Cinematic Arts School at the University of Southern California, and the New York Film Academy.

She is currently developing her first feature film.