Marwa Zein is an international award winning film director, scriptwriter, camera-person and producer for her debut documentary Khartoum Offside (2019) and her short fiction films A game (2009) and One week, Two days (2016). She is currently developing her first feature fiction film Lily's Mecca, which was awarded a development grant from the Göteborg Film Festival in 2021. Marwa’s films have shown at the Berlinale, Hot Docs, CPH DOX, Sheffield DocFest, Visions du réel, BOZAR, JCC and IDFA. Khartoum Offside received the 15th Africa Movie Academy Award for best film (AMAA), best first work by TV5 Monde, in addition to more than 27 national and international awards.

Marwa was a jury member at CPH DOX and Dox Box, a film programmer at the Sudan Independent Film Festival, a festival director at the shnit Worldwide Shortfilmfestival - Cairo Playground and a film professor at SRH Berlin. She studied chemical engineering, film, media arts and imagery in Cairo, Copenhagen and Cologne.