Egyptian director, writer and producer, born in 1978 in Cairo, he graduated from the Faculty of Applied Arts in 2001 and started his life as a textile engineer. In 2002, he pursued another career by joining the High Cinema Institute in Cairo to study filmmaking and graduated in 2007 and became a teacher there from 2008 until today.Sherif El Bendary has directed a number of short films and documentaries that have been screened in many festivals around the world. His first short film Rise and Shine was produced by the National Film Center (Egypt) in 2006, the film was selected in many international festivals and won several awards including the Tribeca film festival in 2007.In 2011, he directed a feature documentary On the road to Downtown, and among 9 other directors, he participated with the segment "Curfew" in the feature film 18 days (Official Selection Cannes 2011). El Bendary won the Robert Bosch Film Prize at the Berlinale Campus Talent 2014 for his short film Dry hot summer - an Egyptian-German co-production - the film premiered at Clermont Ferrand ISFF 2016, and was subsequently screened at numerous festivals around the world and won a number of awards. In 2017, El Bendary released his first feature film Ali, the Goat and Ibrahim, an Emirati-French co-production, which won the Best Actor Award at the Dubai IFF and was released in Egypt, France and many other countries in the same year. Sherif El Bendary had a television series, The Brotherhood II, written by screenwriter Wahid Hamed, a major historical production with political dimensions that caused controversy at the time. El Bendary has participated as a jury member in several film festivals, including the Cairo International Film Festival, the El Gouna Film Festival and the Egyptian National Film Festival. Recently, Sherif Elbendary founded Africa Films, a film production company primarily focused on short and feature films for promising and aspiring first and second time filmmakers, and will also produce his second feature film Spray.