Farah Nabulsi

About Farah

Farah Nabulsi is a Palestinian-British Oscar-nominated and BAFTA award-winning filmmaker and human rights advocate.

She is the daughter of Palestinians who were fortunate enough to make a home in 1970's Britain — unlike the millions who continue to remain stateless in refugee camps.

Born, raised and educated in London, Farah began her career as an institutional equity stockbroker. She ended up with a CFA designation at JP Morgan Chase before moving on to build a children-focused business that she ran for 10 years.

In 2015, she started working in the film industry.

She founded a production company through which she writes, produces and directs fiction films, exploring topics that matter to her and she created a digital resource to deconstruct the Israeli military occupation of Palestine in a way never done before.

Filmmaker

Farah is an Academy Award®-Nominated and BAFTA®-Winning Palestinian-British filmmaker. Since 2016, she has been writing and producing fiction films inspired by socially relevant themes. Her first short film, Today They Took My Son, was endorsed by British director Ken Loach and screened at the United Nations.

The Present, her directorial debut, which she also co-wrote and produced, premiered at Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival in 2020 and won the coveted Audience Award for Best Film. It went on to win over 60 International Film Festival Jury and Audience Awards, a BAFTA® award, and it scored an Oscar® nomination. The Present was licensed internationally including to Canal+ and Netflix Worldwide.

The Teacher, Farah’s directorial feature-length debut, had its World Premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. It had its MENA Premiere at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where it took home the Best Actor award and the main Jury Prize (the jury was headed by director Baz Lurhmann). The film stars renowned Palestinian actor Saleh Bakri and British actress Imogen Poots and has won over 18 International Film Festival Awards. The Teacher was also BAFTA®-Longlisted for Outstanding Debut (2024) and BIFA-Longlisted in 3 categories (2023).

In her words: "The arts play a crucial role in changing the world and I believe film precedes them all. It gives voice to the silenced, thereby helping build the empathy and understanding needed to effect change."

Farah has been invited to serve as a jury member at numerous festivals and as a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

IMDB

Films

The Teacher

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Learn more about the Injustice

A Palestinian school teacher struggles to reconcile his risky commitment to political resistance with his emotional support for one of his students and the chance of a new relationship with a volunteer worker.

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Learn more about the Injustice

The Present

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Learn more about Checkpoints Learn more about Apartheid

On his wedding anniversary, Yusef and his young daughter set out in the West Bank to buy his wife a gift. Between soldiers, segregated roads and checkpoints, how easy would it be to go shopping?

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Learn more about Checkpoints Learn more about Apartheid

Nightmare of Gaza

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Learn more about the Seige of Gaza

A haunting, abstract and experimental narrative of a woman in the streets of Gaza surrounded by the devastation after the bombs have stopped. She has been helping others, but revelations show it is she who now needs help.

The film, Nightmare of Gaza, is poetic and powerful.

Roger Waters Musician, Composer, Co-Founder of Pink Floyd

Gaza is unfortunately not a nightmare. Gaza is a horrifying reality. Farah Nabulsi’s short film, Nightmare of Gaza, presents that reality in an artistic way and reminds all of us of the ongoing tragedy. Nobody can remain indifferent to the voices and images in this film. Nobody should remain indifferent to the fate of Gaza.

Gideon Levy Award-Winning Israeli Journalist & Author

In this stunning and compelling film, Farah Nabulsi captures Gaza’s agony but also her soul. Gaza pleads, “Those who did this are so distant from what they did.” Yet, Nabulsi removes any distance between Gaza and those who insist on silencing her, arguing that Gaza will not be abandoned to indifference and indignity or denied her essential humanity. This beautifully rendered film demands that we maintain a living connection with Gaza's people, experiencing with them their suffering and also their promise. In so doing, said Edward Said, we “unearth the forgotten,” allowing us to embrace nearness over detachment and thereby reclaim our own humanity.

Sara Roy Jewish-American political economist and scholar

It is, finally, the artist, who gives us back our sight, our soul, and so we see and feel what has happened in a place. Thank you, Farah Nabulsi.

Alice Walker Multi-Award-Winning Novelist & Poet (The Color Purple)

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Learn more about the Seige of Gaza

Today They Took My Son

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Learn more about child imprisonment

A mother coping with her young son being taken away by a military system. Her helplessness to prevent the cruel and inhumane treatment she knows he is experiencing is more than any mother can bear.

Farah Nabulsi's extraordinary film is a landmark work. It touched me deeply and made me angry all over again about the horror of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinian people. It points a finger straight at the rest of us, whose governments support Israel, and demand that we speak up now, and never stop until Palestinians are free.

John Pilger Multi-Award Winning Film Director & Journalist

This is a brilliant film and demands to be seen. The story it tells is irrefutable, entirely justified – the evidence is there for all who are not blinded by prejudice. Television companies should be fighting each other to show this. If you care about nothing else, care about Palestinian children. You don't know what's going on? Then watch this film and I dare you to turn your back.

Ken Loach Multi-Award Winning Film Director

I'm deeply touched and moved beyond words! The familiarity of recurrent pain only makes it all that more intolerable. Farah's film made me sob with all other mothers, grandmothers, children, human beings who are overwhelmed by the casualness of such horrific injustice and persistence of such willful cruelty. Her revelation of the simple Palestinian story is so personal, so human, so stark that its intensity becomes unbearable. The aesthetic of immersion left me breathless and silent.

Dr Hanan Ashrawi Palestinian Legislator, Spokeswoman, Academic

American law bars aid to military forces that engage in systematic rights abuses. This heartbreaking film, and the brutal reality of which it is a tiny sample, tell us loud and clear that the law should be enforced and military aid to Israel should end as long as the criminal occupation is maintained.

Noam Chomsky Jewish-American Author & Institute Professor (Emeritus) of MIT University

Today They Took My Son covers a very important topic and an area that Human Rights Watch has spent a great deal of time documenting, so it’s great to see the issue taken up in a way that people can relate to on a personal level. The imagery is great, in particular contrasting the real photographs of detained kids with the fictionalized narrative in the film, and the flashbacks between the documentary footage and the narrative recreated is also effective.

Sarah Leah Whitson Director of Human Rights Watch, MENA

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Learn more about child imprisonment

Oceans of Injustice

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Learn more about the colossal injustices

For decades, a gross injustice has been perpetuated against an entire people. Through consumption of news media, we think we understand what they are going through. But we have no idea.

I heard and I watched and I’m deeply moved—touched to the core. The word, the image, the idea, and the emotion are all so compelling and genuine.

Dr Hanan Ashrawi Palestinian Legislator, Spokeswoman, Academic

Very powerful and a great way to give people a sense that there is so much more they don’t know.

Jonathan Cook Award Winning Journalist

The evocative and sensitive imagery of Oceans of Injustice vividly reminds us of the endless suffering endured by Palestinians and their courage and endurance in rising from despair.

Noam Chomsky Jewish-American Author & Institute Professor (Emeritus) of MIT

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Learn more about the colossal injustices

Speaker

Farah is an engaging and relatable speaker. She brings a down-to-earth artists perspective into the discourse that leaves audiences enlightened, energised and inspired.

In addition to the following topics, she can tailor her talks according to each event and each audience: