The Toronto International Film Festival has tapped Rasha Salti to program African and Middle Eastern cinema.

Salti comes to Toronto with programming experience for the Abu Dhabi Film Festival and CinemaEast Film Festival, and has curated retrospectives on Arab and Syrian Cinema.

“Rasha Salti’s knowledge, wealth of experience and passion for cinema make her an asset to the festival,” Cameron Bailey, co-director of the Toronto International Film Festival, said when making the announcement Thursday.

Salti, who is fluent in Arabic, French and English, will make her official debut as part of the TIFF team at the upcoming Pan-African Film Festival in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.