Hamam Al Ayn

The King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture - Ithra is a masterwork of architecture, a towering beacon in the Dhahran skyline. The steel-pipe wrapped building represents five mutually-supporting stones that house its components: a library, cinema, theater, great hall, a four-gallery museum, a soaring tower dedicated to educational facilities, labs, studios and more, along with a creativity lab and the freestanding Energy Exhibit. A prominent and pioneering cultural center, Ithra is a platform for world-class exhibitions, performances, conferences, cinema and theatrical events. The award- winning center was honored by TIME magazine as “one of the greatest 100 places in the world to visit."
Ithra is dedicated to fostering the Saudi creative and cultural industries as well as acting as a cross-cultural window to act both as a global platform for talent from the Islamic World and a source of curated international experiences for regional audiences. Ithra's museum features two galleries dedicated to Saudi and Islamic culture. The most recent edition of Ithra's Islamic Art Conference featured renowned international speakers, workshops, demonstrations and 11 exhibitions on the theme "In Praise of the Artisan" - a deep dive into the evolving Islamic arts landscape and a call to action for supporting traditional craft professions.

With thirty years of experience as a writer and director, and a career spanning journalism in radio and television, investigative reporting, and documentary filmmaking, Emtiaz Diab has published and produced widely acclaimed work internationally. Her professional journey as a photographer, journalist, director, and media trainer across the Middle East, Europe, and Africa has shaped and enriched her perspective.

Her distinctive literary voice and narrative style led the poet Mahmoud Darwish to describe her as "the most important writer on the Palestinian condition." Diab has reached broad audiences in Palestine and the Arab world, from publishing in the literary journal Al-Karmel to authoring influential books such as Jaffa Before 1948 (1990) and Hamam al-Ayn in Jerusalem (2011).

In 2011, she directed To Be with Juliano, a film for Palestinian television created shortly after the assassination of peace activist Juliano Mer Khamis. She also produced the first film on the First Intifada, Children of the Stones (1988). More recently, she directed N and Zaytoun (2015), a poetic cinematic journey through Palestinian hills, valleys, and villages, narrating the story of a people with a universal identity. Since 2018, she has been working on a new film titled Birth of the Words about the young poet Mahmoud Darwish, which is set to premiere in 2025.