Najwa Najjar

نجوى نجار

1966–present

Born: Washington, D.C., United States

Domain: Film & Television

Recognition: REGIONAL

Biography

Najwa Najjar is a Palestinian filmmaker whose feature dramas and documentaries have become fixtures of the international festival circuit and helped establish a distinct voice for Palestinian women in narrative cinema. Of Palestinian and Jordanian descent, she studied economics and political science in the United States before turning to film, and based her production company, Ustura Films, in Ramallah. Her feature debut, "Pomegranates and Myrrh" (2008), centers on a young Palestinian dancer whose husband is imprisoned by Israeli authorities, exploring themes of love, occupation, and a woman's struggle for self-expression. The film premiered at Sundance and traveled to dozens of festivals, marking one of the first internationally distributed narrative features directed by a Palestinian woman. Najjar's second feature, "Eyes of a Thief" (2014), starred Egyptian superstar Khaled Abol Naga and the singer Souad Massi, and was Palestine's official submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Her later work "Between Heaven and Earth" (2019) used the premise of a divorcing couple's road trip to map the fractured geography and bureaucratic absurdities of Palestinian life under occupation. Before her narrative features she made acclaimed documentaries, including "Naim and Wadee'a" and "Quintessence of Oblivion," works rooted in personal and collective Palestinian memory. Her films consistently foreground women's interior lives against the backdrop of political constraint. Najjar has served on international juries and mentored younger Palestinian filmmakers, and is widely regarded as a pioneer who proved that Palestinian women could direct ambitious, internationally financed feature films.

Why This Person Matters

Najjar is a pioneering Palestinian woman director whose internationally financed feature dramas centered women's experiences under occupation and twice represented Palestine on the world stage.