Naji Abu Nowar

Biography

Abu Nowar was born in Oxford in 1981, from a Jordanian military family. He is the youngest of thirteen half-siblings. As a child, he heard stories from his father about chivalrous and courageous Bedouin warriors, which later influenced his film making. In an interview with The Times' Kate Maltby, he said: "I’ve always had a sympathy for people caught between different pressures."

When Abu Nowar was 10 years old, his family moved to Jordan. He later returned to England to complete his A Levels and attend King's College London where he focused on war studies. He used some of the strategic and organizational skills acquired at college during the making of his movie, Theeb. Early in his career, Abu Nowar and his friend Rupert Lloyd got jobs laying dance floors. When they won their first BAFTA, they would dance on a floor they had constructed years earlier at the Grosvenor House Hotel.

Abu Nowar returned to Amman in 2004, where he took up residence.

Career

In 2005, Abu Nowar was accepted into the RAWI Screenwriters lab, a project sponsored by the Royal Film Commission and the Sundance Institute to support film makers. With this support, he developed his first screenplay Shakoush" (Hammer).

In 2009, Abu Nowar wrote and directed Death of a Boxer, an eight-minute film that appeared at The Palm Springs International Shortest, The Dubai International Film Festival, the Miami Short Film Festival, and the Franco-Arab Film Festival.

Following the success of Death of a Boxer, Abu Nowar had difficulty launching his next project, due to funding issues and ideas that were not strong enough to come to fruition. He had written a Bedouin western in 2003, but it was not until he met producer and screen-writer Bassel Ghandour that the idea for Theeb came together. The two decided to adapt a screenplay, written by Ghandour, into a full-length feature film.

Abu Nowar describes the film Theeb as a "Bedouin Western", with nods to Akira Kurosawa's samurai films and American westerns. During the writing of the film, Abu Nowar and Ghandour lived for a year in Wadi Rum and Wadi Arabeh located in southern Jordan to meet local Bedouins and better understand their folklore in an attempt to portray the people and their way of life authentically. Funding, though inadequate, was secured by private sector investors, as well as several institutions: King Abdullah II fund for development, Doha film institute and Abu Dhabi-based Sanad film fund.

The film, released in 2014, received widespread acclaim and recognition for its success. Abu Nowar dedicated the film to artist and architect Ali Maher, an iconic figure in Jordan. Maher, who offered support to Abu Nowar when he first arrived in Jordan in 2004, died in 2013 and only got to see the movie's trailer.

In February 2015, Abu Nowar was among the honorees who were invited by King Abdullah and Queen Rania to Al Husseiniya Palace, for an event in which the attendees were praised for their entrepreneurship and good citizenship.

Abu Nowar has plans for future films and hopes to feature Bedouin women, which was previously frowned upon by the Bedouin community.

Work

Awards

He received following awards and nominations for films

For Theeb

For Death of a Boxer