2022 Vancouver Festival Guests
Badih Abou Chakra
Guest of Honour
Badih Abou Chacra, a Lebanese actor, who achieved his higher acting studies in the Lebanese University- Faculty of Fine Arts, and he got his honours Bachelor’s degree in 1998, and he is preparing his master thesis at the Lebanese University.
He participated in many acting workshops and courses between Beirut, France, Jordan and Tunisia, and he took part in The Actors Workshop in Boston- USA. Later on, he attended The Equity Showcase workshop with David Smukler and The Professional Actors Lab with David Rotenberg.
In Lebanon and the MENA region, Badih is a renowned actor with many TV series, Cinema movies and theatre plays. He was awarded by Murex D’or committee in 2001, 2010 and 2017, as the Best Lebanese Actor.
Badih won the first place in the third season of Dancing with the Stars TV Show aired on MTV Lebanon Channel, and he developed an acting career, with The MT Space, a Canadian theatre band who played many acts under the direction of Majdi bou Matar, a well known Lebanese director, since 2004.
In poetry, Badih has released his first poetry novel in 2003 entitled “The Man who dances”, two years later, he released “The retreat from the fourth life”, and his last publication was “Breath” in 2014
Isaac Fahed
Special Guest
A Movie and Cinema guru in Lebanon and the Middle East.
In addition to his position as Sales & Programming Manager at Grand Cinemas, and Distribution Manager at Selim Ramia & Co, Isaac Fahed is a Moviemaking developer and consultant, a Film Producer and Writer.
He wrote and co-produced the Lebanese feature film C-Section (Local title “Yerbo Biezzkon) in 2019. Locally, he has co-organized several Film Festivals be it short or feature, and internationally he’s been responsible of diffusing many cross-cultural Cinematic projects.
Mark Ghanimé
Special Guest
Mark Ghanimé is a premier Lebanese Canadian actor born in Calgary, Canada but he didn’t set out to be in the performing arts. After graduating with a finance degree, he was in the real estate development world, working with his father and other developers. The attraction to performing was too great however and at the age of 22, Mark began taking dance, vocal training and ultimately on a whim, saying yes to a background role on a film starring Juliette Lewis.
From that day forward he knew being on set was where he belonged.
His mixed, ethnically ambiguous strength afforded him the ability to play a myriad of archetypes from good, bad and everything in between and those piercing green eyes command attention when he’s on the screen, big or small.
After success in a number of network TV shows in Vancouver, Mark booked the series regular role of Sergio Balleseros in SyFy network’s Helix which filmed in Montreal, Canada. After the show’s exciting 2 season run, Mark moved on to recur and star in various successful shows like Private Eyes, Reign, Slasher and found films for Syfy and Netflix along the way.
Mark currently stars as Dr. Cameron Hayek, the new Lebanese American doctor in town on Netflix’s VIRGIN RIVER. The show is one of the most streamed shows of all time.
Mark resides in Montreal with his wife as they raise their lovely daughter together.
