ABOUT
Lior Shamriz is a film director, interdisciplinary artist, and writer based in North Carolina. In their narrative films, Shamriz often stages drama-comedies that challenge reductive narratives about immigration, nationality, and sexuality. Many examine individual and collective histories related, but not limited, to the MENA region and its diasporas.
Shamriz received their MFA with honors from the Berlin University of the Arts in 2009 and was a DAAD Visiting Scholar at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia in 2013–14. Their oeuvre includes feature-length independent and experimental narrative films, numerous short experimental fiction films, as well as essay and documentary films.
Their work has been featured at the Berlinale (2010, 2013, 2015), Locarno IFF, Sarajevo IFF, MoMA’s New Directors/New Films, BAFICI, Frameline, MixNYC, Torino IFF, and Outfest Los Angeles, and exhibited at KW Berlin, MMCA Korea, and NGV Australia, among many other venues and festivals. They won awards at the Oberhausen Kurzfilmtage (2013, 2014, 2015) and were the subject of retrospectives at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival (2012), Ars Independent Katowice (2012), SteakCinema Seoul (2021), and the Berlin Art Film Festival (2015), among others. In addition to film essays, short documentaries, and narrative films, Shamriz has created dozens of commissioned poetry videos. Some were commissioned directly by the poets, while others were commissioned by the Griffin Poetry Prize in Toronto. They include readings by poets such as Raúl Zurita, Ocean Vuong, Yusef Komunyakaa, Heather McHugh, and Dez’mon Omega Fair.
From 2015 to 2017, Shamriz curated films, performances, and residencies at PAM performance space in Highland Park, Los Angeles, and, beginning in 2018, for Project Space Festival Juárez in Chihuahua, Mexico. In 2023, they launched the magazine Mimesis – Film as Performance. Their writing has appeared in the Journal of New Zealand & Pacific Studies, MoMA’s Dirty Looks reader, Pacific Arts Journal, and Mimesis Magazine. Beginning in July 2026, Shamriz is an assistant professor in Narrative Filmmaking at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.