Politicsאבתיסאם מראענה

Ibtisam Mara'ana

Ibtisam Mara'ana is an Israeli Arab film director and politician who was a Labor Party member of the Knesset from 2021 to 2022.

born 1975Documentary films on Arab societyLabor Party Knesset memberFeminist activismThe series Bila Mu'akhaza

Born: 14 October 1975, Fureidis
Occupation: film director, politician, director
Party: Israeli Labor Party

Ibtisam Mara'ana was born in 1975 in Fureidis

Mara'ana was born in 1975 in Fureidis, a Muslim Arab village in northern Israel. She grew up in a religious family with 5 children, and her mother cleaned houses in nearby Zikhron Ya'akov. For 12 years she also worked cleaning houses there alongside her studies.

She attended high school in Haifa and then the film and television school at Givat Haviva, finishing in 1997.

In 2000 she started a film and television program at her old high school in Fureidis. In 2003 she founded Ibtisam Films, which makes documentaries on Arab society in Israel, women and minorities. She taught film at Bezalel from 2010 and at Sapir College from 2016, and directed the Arabic series Bila Mu'akhaza from 2019.

In 2021 the Central Elections Committee disqualified her from running, and the Supreme Court reversed the decision. She was elected to the Knesset for Labor and chaired the special committee on foreign workers. She was not reelected in 2022.

In 2014 she married Boaz Menuhin, a Jewish Israeli, in a non-religious ceremony in Tel Aviv. The couple has a daughter.