Neila Driss
Neila Driss (28 June 1964) is a Tunisian lawyer, journalist, blogger and film critic. In 2006, she won the prize for most promising blog at the Tunisia Blog Awards and in the following year, she won the first place jury prize. More recently, she has been writing about cinema in Tunisian, Egyptian and African newspapers (Tunis Hebdo, Al Akhbar and Al Ahram) and in online magazines and websites, including Webdo.tn, Tourismag.com, Uima20.com, Film International and Africiné Magazine. She has covered various film festivals, including Cannes (since 2013), Carthage (since 2010), Cairo (since 2016), El Gouna, Luxor African Film Festival, Malmö Arab Film Festival, and Aswan International Women Film Festival. In October 2017, she was a jury member of the Cinéalma Festival (France). In 2019, she co-hosted the radio program “Cinemascope” on the Tunisian radio RTCI (which is a national radio whose programs are in French and / or English). She was one of the 70 film critics to have selected the 100 best films by Arab women of all time, the list of which was revealed during the fifth edition of the Aswan International Women Film Festival (Egypt). In April 2021, she created a Facebook group for female film lovers, Pink Popcorn, to encourage them to discuss films and to go to the cinema. In addition, discussions via Zoom were organized between cinema professionals and the members of the group. She was member of the independent commission for the selection of Tunisian fiction films which will be in official competition at the 32nd edition of the Carthage Film Festival (Tunisia). She was president of the critic jury for feature film competition of the 26th edition of the International Festival of Author Cinema in Rabat (Morocco). She is an active member of the Tunisian Association for the Promotion of Film Critics (ATPCC), which is a member association of FIPRESCI (the International Federation of Film Critics). Since August 2023, she has been a member of FIPRESCI, further solidifying her engagement with the global film criticism community.