Cherien Dabis is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker and actress who has established herself as a singular creative force across film, television, and performance. Widely recognized as a pioneer of Arab American storytelling, she brings authenticity, complexity, and humor to the narratives she writes, directs, and performs, spotlighting underrepresented perspectives with heart and humanity.

Her latest feature, All That’s Left of You, which she wrote, directed, produced, and stars in, world-premiered to critical acclaim at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. The film has since won multiple top honors, including the Golden Gate Award and Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at the San Francisco International Film Festival, the GIO Audience Award for Best International Feature at the Sydney Film Festival, and both Best Film and Best Screenplay at the Malaysia International Film Festival.

Dabis first broke through with her groundbreaking debut feature Amreeka, which premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival before winning the coveted FIPRESCI International Critics Prize in the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes. The film went on to collect more than a dozen international awards, three Independent Spirit Award nominations, a Gotham Award nomination for Best Picture, and a place on the National Board of Review’s Top Ten Independent Films of the Year. That same year, Variety named her one of “Ten Directors to Watch.”

She followed with her second feature, May in the Summer, which also marked her acting debut opposite Bill Pullman and Alia Shawkat. The film opened the 2013 Sundance Film Festival after earning the prestigious Sundance/NHK International Filmmaker Award, and went on to screen at the Venice Film Festival, further establishing Dabis as a bold new voice in international cinema.

In television, Dabis has directed and executive produced acclaimed episodes of the Golden Globe-winning series Ramy and guest-starred in Netflix’s Gotham and Peabody Award-winning comedy Mo. In 2022, she earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series for the celebrated “Boy From 6B” episode of Hulu’s hit series Only Murders in the Building — a dialogue-free installment told from the perspective of a deaf character and hailed by Variety as “the episode of the year” and “a tour de force of directorial achievement.” She went on to direct standout episodes in seasons two and three, as well as episodes of Netflix’s Ozark.

As an actress, Dabis can also be seen in Prime Video’s Fallout and Tarik Saleh’s Eagles of the Republic, which premiered in competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival and is Sweden’s Official Submission for Best International Feature Film for the 98th Academy Awards®.