Biography
Canadian Jordanian film producer Rula Nasser started her career in the film industry in 1999 by working on several international productions for the BBC and Discovery channels.
She also worked at the Royal Film Commission of Jordan (RFC) for five years and established the Filmmaker’s Support Program. Then, in 2011, Rula founded her own production company, The Imaginarium Films, which focuses on discovering local talents and developing appealing universal stories set in the Arab world.
Throughout her career, Nasser produced many award-winning films that participated in several prestigious film festivals around the world, such as The Last Friday (2011), Waiting for P.O. Box (2012), and My Love Awaits Me by the Sea (2013).
Furthermore, Nasser was chosen by Variety magazine as one of the top Ten Arab Producers to Watch in 2012.
In 2019, her film Scales won the Tanit d'Bronze Award at the Carthage Film Festival and the Verona Film Club Award at the Venice International Film Festival. The film was also nominated for Best Youth Feature Film at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards.
In the following year, Nasser worked as a line producer on the drama-thriller TV series Caliphate.
In 2021, she line-produced the film MITRA by Kaweh Modiri and the TV series SAS: WHO DARES WINS, and produced Bassel Ghandour's THE ALLEYS—the first Jordanian feature film to be selected at Rotterdam and Locarno, which was nominated for the Best Original Score for a Narrative Feature Film at the Canadian Screen Music Awards—as well as Mohamed Diab's AMIRA, which held its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival and won three awards.
Then, in 2022, Rula worked as an associate producer on Ali Abbasi's HOLY SPIDER — which is Denmark's entry for Best International Feature at the 2023 Oscars — and won many awards, including Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival.
Also in the same year, she worked as an associate producer on Adil El-Arbi and Bilall Fallah’s REBEL, which won the Jury Award at the Philadelphia Film Festival.
In 2023, she produced and co-wrote Amjad Rasheed's INSHALLAH A BOY, which has been chosen as Jordan's official submission for the esteemed 96th Academy Awards.
Notably, this film made history as the first-ever Jordanian feature to be selected for the Cannes Film Festival, where it garnered the Gan Foundation Award and the Rail d'Or Award for Best Feature Film. Additionally, it received the Asia Pacific Awards for Best Performance and scooped up notable awards, including Best Actress and a Jury Award at the Rotterdam Arab Film Festival, as well as the Best Screenplay for a Narrative Feature Award at the Mystic Film Festival.
So far, INSHALLAH A BOY has been released theatrically in France, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE to widespread success and is set to be released in further Arab countries soon.
Alongside this remarkable achievement, she also served as a co-producer for Abu Bakr Shawky's latest film, HAJJAN, which had a sold-out world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
In the meantime, her upcoming project is KING OF THE RING by Mohammed Saeed Harib.
