Biography
Najwa Najjar was born in Washington in 1973 to a Palestinian mother and a Jordanian father. She studied political science and economics before studying film in the United States. In 2000, she and her husband Hani Kort founded their own production company, Ustura Films, based in Ramallah..
She began her career in advertising and produced her first fiction film, Pomegranates and Myrrh. That same year, she shot a short film, Naim and Wadee’a, based on the oral accounts of two members of her family who were forced from their home in Jaffa in 1948. Her second feature film, Eyes of a thief, is a thriller based on a true story and filmed entirely in the West Bank, with Algerian singer Soad Massi playing her first role as an actress. Her latest fiction film, Between Heaven and Earth , is a romantic comedy that deals with a young couple’s difficulties of movement within Palestine, among other issues, revealing the multiple forms of oppression operating in the state of Israel.
Najwa Najjar works as a producer of short films and is a member of the jury in different international film festivals. She is also a film and literature critic and has written several articles on Palestinian cinema.
Najwa Najjar lives between the United States and Palestine.