Alia Yunis

is a writer and filmmaker whose work has been translated into 10 languages. Her documentary, The Golden Harvest, a 6,000-year-old love story between the people of the Mediterranean and their olive trees. This led to Tree Routed, an interactive film platform globally connecting personal heritage stories about trees, a work in progress. She is now developing Datelines, a film about the odd journey of the date palm from Arabia to the US and back. Her novel, The Night Counter (Random House 2010), which involves a very mobile fig tree, has been critically acclaimed by the Washington Post and several other publications. In 2010, she co-founded the Zayed University Middle East Film Festival (ZUMEFF), now the longest-running film festival in the Gulf. Alia recently co-edited Re-Orienting the Middle East: Film and Digital Media Where the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean Meet (Indiana University Press, 2024) and Future Stories in the Global Heritage Industry (Routledge, 2024). Her work has been translated into 10 languages.