Nabil Maleh

Nabil Maleh was a Syrian film director, screenwriter, producer, painter and poet. He is considered the father of modern Syrian cinema and one of the leading masters of Arab cinema. He earned his master's degree from the film academy FAMU in Prague, Czech Republic, and published more than 1000 articles, short stories, essays, and poems. He was the writer and director of 120 short, experimental and documentary works and 12 feature-length films, including The Leopard, The Extras, and Fragments. He won more than 60 awards at international film festivals, including several lifetime achievement awards. Several of his films are in the curriculum of international film schools and he taught film direction, acting, writing and aesthetics at many universities, centers and associations, including the University of Texas at Austin and the University of California in Los Angeles. He was politically outspoken and critical of the government of the United Arab Republic, which controlled Syria in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He lived in Switzerland and Greece before returning to Syria in 1993. He died in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in 2016, at the age of 79.