Photography: Patrick Tombola

Photography: Patrick Tombola

   Mani Benchelah is a multi award-winning French-Algerian documentary filmmaker and war reporter, who has spent the last 13 years capturing a wide range of global events, including conflicts, humanitarian crises, and social issues, in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and South Asia. He has won a 2023 Peabody Award for his work in Ukraine as well as two Emmy® Awards and a Royal Television Society Award (RTS) for his work in Syria.

Before delving into photography and filmmaking, Mani studied Arabic, Chinese Mandarin, history and linguistics at INALCO, the French Institute for Eastern Studies in Paris. Benchelah’s first photo reports were focused on social stories such as transgender communities in Pakistan or Sufis in India that were published in National Geographic (France). In 2011, when an unprecedented popular movement calling for democratic reform and social justice in the Arab world started to gain traction in Syria - a country sealed from international media - Benchelah traveled undercover to the city of Homs, at the time the epicenter of insurrection, and covered the fights between the armed rebels of the Free Syrian Army and the regime forces. The New York Times described Mani Benchelah’s work in Homs as “a remarkable portrait of urban warfare in the Syrian city”. He was at the time the first foreign visual journalist to access the opposition-controlled Syrian city of Homs and his exclusive photography ‘SYRIA, INSIDE HOMS’ won the prestigious Visa d'Or Award at the Visa pour l'Image, the International Photojournalism Festival in Perpignan (France) also earning him recognition from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for his work on medical workers in the conflict zone.

In 2012, Mani Benchelah crossed clandestinely Syrian border another time and reached Homs to cover the siege on the city as it was besieged and attacked by the regime’s army. His film ‘HORROR OF HOMS’, which captured the intensity of the assault on the city and its effects on the civilian population, was first broadcasted on British television Channel 4 News and won multiple awards, including an Emmy and an RTS Award in News and Documentary; he was also nominated Best Camera Operator of the Year at the RTS Awards. After that Benchelah shifted fully to filmmaking and continued to produce short documentaries from Syria as the country spiraled into full-fledged civil war. One of his subsequent works, ‘SYRIA’S KURDS FIGHTING A WAR WITHIN A WAR’, earned him a second Emmy in 2014.

In the following years, Benchelah continued his work in Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon, and Yemen, focusing on human rights issues with Channel 4 News as well as with Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. In 2015-16, he filmed and directed ‘THIS IS EXILE’, a documentary centered on the devastating impact of war on Syrian children. The documentary provided an intimate portrait of Syrian refugee children who fled the violence of the civil war and sought refuge in neighboring Lebanon. Through their own words, the children in the film tell a story of resilience in the face of loss and shattered dreams. Funded by Save the Children UK, ‘THIS IS EXILE’ received wide international distribution and was broadcast in 13 territories globally including the US, Europe and MENA (Middle East and North Africa). It won the Amnesty International Award for Best documentary film at the Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival and was nominated at IDFA for Best Mid-Length Documentary and at the BBC Arabic Film Festival in London for Best Documentary. 

Recently, Mani Benchelah directed, filmed and produced ‘UKRAINE : LIFE UNDER RUSSIA’S ATTACK' - alongside Patrick Tombola - a documentary commissioned by PBS Frontline and Channel 4. The film is an intimate and dramatic look inside the Russian assault on Kharkiv - Ukraine's second-largest city - told by displaced families, civilians caught in the fight and first responders. The film is narrated by Academy Award-winning actress Cate Blanchett. It has won a 2023 Peabody Award for News as well as a British Journalism Award in Foreign Affairs Journalism. It has also been nominated for a Rose d'Or Award as well as for a Broadcast Award for Best Current Affairs Documentary.

Mani Benchelah’s work has been published by PBS FRONTLINE, Channel 4, BBC, CNN, Vice News, CBS, ZDF, Al-Jazeera English, American Pivot TV, SVT and many others.

Mani Benchelah is fluent in Arabic, French, and English, and has an intermediate knowledge of Chinese Mandarin and Greek. He is also an advanced freediver and an RYA Yachtmaster® Offshore skipper. Mani Benchelah is based in Athens (Greece).

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