mec film

biography Irit Neidhardt

Biography Irit Neidhardt

Irit Neidhardt was born in Germany in 1969 and brought up in Germany and Israel/Palestine; now she based in Berlin/Germany. Since 1995 she is teaching and curating in the field of Middle Eastern cinemas. She was managing an adult education centre in Germany and teaching at SOAS (School for Oriental and African Studies) in London before founding mec film in 2002.

mec film (middle eastern cinemas) is a distribution company for films exclusively from the Middle East. The German theatrical catalogue includes films like RANA’S WEDDING by Hany Abu Assad, ROUTE 181 by Michel Khleifi and Eyal Sivan, ATASH by Tawfik Abu Wael or NEWS FROM HOME by Amos Gitai. In the World Sales mec film distributes Simon El Habre's THE ONE MAN VILLAGE, Annemarie Jacir’s LIKE TWENTY IMPOSSIBLES, Tawfik Abu Wael’s DIARY OF A MALE WHORE, Dana Goldberg’s ALPHA and others.

Irit Neidhardt is associate producer of Mahmoud al Massad’s award winning feature-documentary RECYCLE and co-producer of Simon el-Habre’s highly acclaimed THE ONE MAN VILLAGE. She worked as consultant for Tamer el-Said’s THE LAST DAYS OF THE CITY as well as for the cinematic adaption of Sayed Kashua’s LET IT BE MORNING.

She is editor of the books “We are the Good Ones. Antisemitism in Germany’s Radical Left.” (with Willi Bishof) and “Living with the Conflict?! Reports and Analyses from Leftists in Palestine and Israel.” with contributions by Tanya Reinhard, Ella Shohat, Azza El-Hassan, Nabila Espanioly and others (both books are German-language only) and author of various articles on subjects related to cinema and the Middle East. See the list of publications.