Lebanese Director Kassem Istanbouli Awarded UNESCO-Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture

Lebanese actor and director Kassem Istanbouli has been officially co-awarded this year’s UNESCO-Sharjah Prize For Arab Culture for his work in rehabilitating historical cinemas in Lebanon. Istanbouli’s efforts to restore cinemas across Lebanon has been recognized by UNESCO, who hailed his and co-laureate Hajer Ben Boubaker’s “extraordinary contributions to promoting the arts and Arab culture and supporting their local communities.”

Created in 1998 and run by UNESCO at the initiative of the United Arab Emirates, the UNESCO-Sharjah Prize awards two laureates per year — individuals, groups or institutions — in recognition of their contribution to Arab art and culture, or for participating in the dissemination of the latter outside the Arab world.

Istanbouli’s achievements in Lebanon include getting Nabatieh’s Stars Cinema, Tyre’s Rivoli Cinema, and Tripoli’s Ampere Theatre back up and running. He is also the director and founder of the Lebanese National Theater in Tyre and the Lebanese National Theater in Tripoli and has been a project manager at the Tiro Association for Arts in Lebanon since 2014. While in 2020, he co-founded the Arab Culture and Arts Network (ACAN), which includes over 700 organizational and individual members from across the world.

Istanbouli’s co-laureate is French-Tunisian independent researcher and sound director Hajer Ben Boubaker, creator and producer of the Vintage Arab podcast, and producer and documentary director for France Culture. The prize will see the winners equally split an award of $60,000 between each other. The official award ceremony will be held at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris on 26 June 2023.

We’d like to send our warmest congratulations to Istanbouli and Ben Boubaker, and hope to see them continuing to promote and contribute to Arab art and culture after this award.