With a background in filmmaking and theatre, Rouba Atiyeh worked on 'place and identity' for marginalized groups, second-generation immigrants, and on women in wars, as an awarded actress, writer and director. Atiyeh wrote and directed awarded plays including “Nothing to do with Snow”; “The Rug”; and two musicals, “The Journey” and “Arabian Rhythms”.
She has an MA in Documentary from Goldsmith's College, and has been an Emmy Awards final round juror (docs section).
She produced and directed feature documentaries for Aljazeera Documentary Channel, Awdah Refugee Centre, London, and other commissioners, including “Let Me Stand Alone”, “The Palestinian Draws His Portrait”, “Salut Comrade”; “Arab Jews”; “Syriac Qitharet”; “My Journey Behind the Wall”; “1948 Palestinians”; “Tall Ezaatar”; “Stories from the Camp”. She made independent and commissioned shorts including, “Juliette”; “A Summertime Story”; “Remembrance 1948”; “The Thing that Walks”; and “Saadeh”; in addition to developmental corporate videos in Syria, Yemen, Jordan, UK, and Iraq.
Ruba worked on familial anthropology through field research in refugee camps over the course of several years; and through her first auteur feature film “A Home Of One’s Own”, with its newer version, “Umbilicus”.
As a presenter and producer, Atiyeh hosted cultural talk-shows on TRT and JTV, including a pan-Arab jury-reviewed show on the most impactful 100 Arabic books in the XXieth century.
As a researcher and filmmaker, Atiyeh works on suppressed histories and archives, where she holds study-group seminars on issues such as demographic engineering, alienation, and the representations of forbidden geographies.
Since 2011, Atiyeh teaches documentary filmmaking, script writing and supervises graduation films at the Lebanese University. She also trains emerging documentarists from Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Iraq.
She is currently doing her PhD in the anthropology of image, and is in development of two narrative features, “Fog/ Nshigha”; that delves into the impact of inherited collective trauma on interpersonal relations in diasporic communities; and "To the Sea" a love story in pre-1948 Haifa, that rewrites the historical question through a universal love triangle.
