Darin J. Sallam is an award-winning Jordanian writer and director of Palestinian roots, recipient of King Abdullah II Bin Al-Hussein’s Order of Excellence Insignia. She holds an MFA from the Red Sea Institute for Cinematic Arts (RSICA), affiliated with the University of Southern California.
To her credit are 5 award-winning shorts, including THE DARK OUTSIDE (2012) and THE PARROT (2016). Sallam is a Berlinale Talent, a Robert Bosch Film Prize recipient, an Asia Pacific Screen Academy member and a Film Independent Fellow. She was a jury member at international film festivals, most recently the BAFTA-Yugo grant. She is co-founder & managing partner at the Amman-based production company TaleBox.
Her critically acclaimed debut feature film FARHA (2021) had its world premiere at the 46th Toronto International Film Festival, won numerous awards to date and started streaming in December 2022 on Netflix worldwide. FARHA was also selected as Jordan’s entry in the International Feature Film category at the 95th Academy Awards (Oscars) in 2023 and achieved a historic first win for Jordan by receiving the Best Youth Film award at the 15th Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA), known as “the Asian Oscars”, making Sallam the first Jordanian director ever to be awarded an APSA.
More recently, Sallam was named among Variety’s Impactful International Women of 2023 and received the IMEU (Institute of Middle East Understanding) Storyteller Award 2023.