Atiq Rahimi, born in Kabul in 1962, is a French-Afghan writer and filmmaker. In the mid 80s, he sought political asylum in France. He completed his PhD in audio-visual communications at the Sorbonne, and began writing Earth and Ashes in 1996. In 2004, he won the Prix du Regard vers l’Avenir at the Cannes Film Festival, for his debut film Earth and Ashes, based on his own book. In 2008, he was awarded the Prix Goncourt, the highest literary honor in France, for The Patience Stone. In 2012, Rahimi directed the film adaptation of the book from a screenplay he co-authored with Jean-Claude Carrière. The film won several awards including the FACE Award at the Istanbul International Film Festival and the SIGNIS Award at the Hong Kong International Film Festival. Rahimi also authored novels A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear (2011), in which he uses his tight, spare prose to send the reader deep into the fractured mind and emotions of a country caught between religion and the political machinations of the world’s superpowers. In his novel, A Curse on Dostoevsky (2014), he not only flirts with literature but also ponders the roles of sin, guilt, and redemption in the Muslim world. In 2019, his movie Our Lady of The Nile (2019) won the Crystal Bear at the 2020 Berlin International Film Festival.