Nabil Maleh
Directing
Biography
Nabil Maleh (September 28, 1936 – February 24, 2016) was a Syrian film director, screenwriter, producer, painter, and poet, widely regarded as a founding figure of modern Syrian cinema. Born in Damascus, he initially traveled to Czechoslovakia to study nuclear physics before discovering cinema and enrolling at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU), where he earned a master’s degree in film and television directing. His formative years in Prague immersed him in an international cultural environment that deeply shaped his artistic outlook. Upon returning to Syria in the mid-1960s, Maleh became the country’s first formally trained European film-school graduate and joined the newly established National Film Organization. His feature The Leopard (1972) brought Syrian cinema international recognition, winning the Special Prize at the Locarno Film Festival. Throughout the 1970s, he directed politically engaged films addressing themes of power, labor, war, and displacement, including works responding to the Palestinian struggle and the Vietnam War. Persistent censorship and political conflict led him to work extensively abroad. Maleh lived and taught in Europe and the United States, holding teaching positions at institutions including the University of Texas at Austin and the University of California, Los Angeles. Across his career, he directed approximately 12 feature films and more than 100 short, documentary, and experimental works, while also publishing over 1,000 articles, essays, poems, and short stories. His films received more than 60 international awards, including multiple lifetime achievement honors, and remain part of film-school curricula worldwide, securing his legacy as a central figure in Arab and world cinema.
Known For
The stingy man "Fathi" marries "Su'aad" after the death of his first wife, he rents rooms of his house and has permanent differences between his family members and him due to his stinginess within a comedy mold. The story revolves around a lost bag that roams between several characters in a humorous way, and affects the lives of each of them in a surprising way. The plot depends on the consequences of losing and recovering the case, which creates a range of comedic situations and paradoxical situations that put the characters in sometimes embarrassing situations, and sometimes in funny situations.
The Lost Case
Set in Syria in the early 1900s. A peasant has his land taken from him by the authorities. He gets imprisoned and beaten by the gendarme, but manages to escape to the mountains where starts a bloody struggle for revolution.
The Cheetah
Three Palestinian men strive to escape the hardships of life in a refugee camp. Under the scorching sun, the men enlist the help of an old man, Abu Al-Khaizuran, to smuggle them in an empty water tank across the desert.
Men Under the Sun
The events revolve around a three-person gang led by Abu Al-Ghawar (Duraid Lahham), who plans to steal Simon Bay, and the gang members succeed in deceiving him and stealing his locker. Whereas the husband of his sister (Nihad al-Qala'i) is a person who has many problems and disputes with the people of the region due to the mockery of the people of the region of Abu al-Ghawar Who uses this money to do amazing inventions that have no use.
Ghawar James Bond
Salem dreams of being an actor but is still working in a gas station, only his love for Nada can make things easier for him.
The Extras
Abu Salem is a small family living a very miserable life, and their dream is simple in life. The wife is overwhelmed as she suffers from some diseases, the husband gets into several unsuccessful adventures, and the children open their eyes to this cruel world. We follow their lives and dreams to a better tomorrow.
Bikaya suar
A revolutionary journalist tries to expose a corrupt, opportunistic politician who is making shady deals. The prominent politician tries to take revenge on him, using his intelligence and wide connections, by framing him in a murder that will silence him forever.
Mr. Progressive
When a film crew descends on a rural Syrian village, the act of filmmaking itself begins to unsettle everyday life. Centered on Najla, the film observes how performance, desire, and social pressure blur the line between reality and fiction. Najla’s Passions was the first Syrian feature produced digitally.
Najla's Passions
In 90 seconds, Nabil Maleh mimics the tone and cadence of an American-style television advertisement, pitching napalm as if it were a consumer product—an acid critique of the rhetoric that sanitizes mass violence.