Born in Sharjah, UAE in 1967, Masoud Amralla earned his degree in Media from the UAE University. He served as the Curator and Director of the Emirates Film Competition cultural foundation in Abu Dhabi from 2000-2006, as Director of the Gulf Film Festival from 2008-2014, and as Artistic Director of the Dubai International Film Festival from 2007-2017. He is widely published both as a poet and as a cinema critic, and his writings have appeared in many Arab magazines and newspapers. Al Ali has directed several shorts and documentaries including Al-Rumram (1994), The Rainbow Room – 100 Years of Cinema (1996), Horizontals and Ornament in the Baroque Age (1999), and The Mountain Keepers (2005). He has served as jury member for more than 40 Arabic and international film festivals such as the Singapore International Film Festival (2007); Biennale Des Cinémas Arabes, Paris (2003); Echoes Film Festival, Greece (2003), Rhodes International Films & Visual Arts Festival, Greece (2003); Tehran International Short Film Festival (2003); and Docudays – Beirut International Documentary Festival (2003). Al Ali has supervised and co-written many scripts for Arab and non-Arab filmmakers. He has also edited films and published a joint poetry book entitled Hymns of the Seagull.