Soudade Kaadan and Elia Suleiman invited to join Academy behind the Oscars

Syrian filmmaker Soudade Kaadan and Palestinian director Elia Suleiman are among the Middle East figures who have been invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organisation behind the Oscars.

Kaadan is best known for Nezouh, a surreal coming-of-age story set in war-torn Damascus, which won the Armani Beauty Audience Award at the 2022 Venice Film Festival. Her 2018 film, The Day I Lost My Shadow, was also awarded at Venice and became the first Syrian film to screen at the festival in decades.

Suleiman, meanwhile, is a seminal figure in Arab cinema, known for works like Divine Intervention and It Must Be Heaven, which explore themes of Palestinian identity and struggle under Israeli occupation through satire and deadpan humour.

Kaadan and Suleiman’s inclusion comes as part of the Academy’s latest round of membership invitations, extended to 534 figures from across filmmaking disciplines. Prominent international names includes Ariana Grande, Dave Bautista, Mikey Madison, Kieran Culkin and Jason Momoa.

Those who accept the invitation become voting members of the Academy, with the power to help shape Oscars nominations and winners. They’re also eligible to join one of its 18 branches, from directing and writing, to documentary and editing.

More than half of those invited come from countries and territories outside the US, in what appears to be a bid to diversify the voting ranks of the Oscars. The Academy, which has more than 10,000 members, has long faced criticism for its lack of representation, particularly in terms of race, gender and geography.

The #OscarsSoWhite backlash of 2015 and 2016 sparked a reckoning within the institution, spurring an initiative to broaden its membership and better reflect the global community.

“We are thrilled to invite this esteemed class of artists, technologists, and professionals to join the Academy,” said Bill Kramer and Janet Yang, the Academy’s chief executive and president respectively. “Through their commitment to filmmaking and to the greater movie industry, these exceptionally talented individuals have made indelible contributions to our global filmmaking community.”

There is a marked presence of Arab and Middle Eastern talent in the wave of membership. These include several Palestinian talents, such as Mediterranean Fever director Maha Haj, Wedding in Galilee director Michel Khleifi, Another Body editor Rabab Haj Yahya as well as Hamdan Ballal and Basel Adra, recognised for co-directing No Other Land, which won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature this year. The documentary follows the struggles faced by Palestinian journalist Basel Adra as he tries to protect his West Bank village Masafer Yatta from Israeli settlers.

Asmae El Moudir was also invited to join the Academy. The Moroccan filmmaker is known for her documentary The Mother of All Lies, the country's submission for best international feature film at the 2024 Oscars.

The growing presence of Arab filmmakers in the Academy is an uplifting shift in an organisation that has long focused on Hollywood. Their inclusion brings regional narratives into global focus, while also empowering filmmakers from across the region to shape how cinema is perceived in the industry’s most influential stage.