Julie-Yara Atz

Julie-Yara Atz is a Syrian-Swiss writer, actor, and filmmaker. They earned an MA in Cultural Studies from SOAS, focusing on subversive storytelling in Syrian diasporic cinema. A practitioner at heart, she has completed two short films now entering the festival circuit: What If We Were Happy? (Beirut International Women Film Festival 2025) and Amoureuses Folles du Reflet dans le Miroir, her first work of fiction, which explores the complexities of twinship. Their debut short documentary, Leaving Syria: long live the youth, premiered at Telluride in 2017.

Drawn to spontaneous projects, Julie-Yara filmed the observational infrared piece On Dreams, the Surreal and the Liberation of Syria (and Homs) immediately after the fall of the regime, in order to capture the dissonance they felt. As an actor, she played the lead journalist in ITV/Hardcash’s Kingdom Uncovered: Inside Saudi Arabia, appeared in BBC/ITV’s Shetland (Season 6), and performed in a multilingual staging of Tous des oiseaux by Wajdi Mouawad at Theater Trier.

Julie-Yara is passionate about stories that challenge norms and illuminate hidden perspectives. Off-screen, they love cats and embrace their identity as a cultural anomaly.