St Edward's Rhubarb Issue 5

ST EDWARD’S

F E A T U R E S

Naji Abu Nowar

(E, 1997-1999) was born

in the John Radcliffe, and has since divided his

life between Oxford, London and Jordan. His

first feature film,

Theeb

, was released in 2014

and won Naji the Orizzonti Award for Best

Director at the Venice Film Festival. Here he

speaks with Rebecca Ting shortly before the

UK release of

Theeb

in August 2015.

(Since this interview Naji won the 2016

BAFTA for Outstanding Debut, and Theeb was

shortlisted for Best Foreign Language Film at the

2016 Oscars - Ed.)

What are your strongest memories

from your time at School?

It was a tradition at the time for the leavers

to do a prank the night before Gaudy. We

broke out of House, met up on the field in

the middle of the night and then all charged

on the marquee in the Quad. I got stuck in

a bush for three hours hiding while the staff

rounded everyone up. I managed to get inside

without being caught, but while boasting to

my friends of this fact I didn’t realise that my

Housemaster, James Quick, was standing right

behind me…

The best teacher I had was Mr Lush. He

told us that he never got his driving licence;

tried and failed six times! He was an excellent

teacher – lots of lesson plans and diagrams.

I loved playing football. Mr Oxley gave me

a role in a play. I played Pete the racist boat

engineer in

Showboat

- he chose me to play a

white supremacist! He was a very nice man

and taught me history. That role was my first

and only attempt at acting. I was terrible at it,

and that might have been what turned me into

a writer and director!

I tried to put on a play at Teddies as well,

but we only managed three rehearsals before

the exams got in the way. The then Head of

Drama encouraged me in writing this play

which was a mix of

A Streetcar Named Desire

Rebel Without a Cause

and

On the Waterfront

It was going to be an independent side

production. There was a guy I used to play

football with called Dave Johnstone who was

the James Dean heartthrob character, and

then it was just characters in the year that

I found entertaining. No-one will ever see

those scripts.

It seems that you took full advantage

of your proximity to London to get a

regular cultural fix.

I used to take the Oxford Tube up and go to

the NFT. It was amazing, I loved it. It had lots

of seasons of Orson Welles, Carol Reed,

Kurosawa films etc. I’d also go to the Phoenix

in Oxford and the main Oxford cinemas. It’s

funny, Oxford is very important too, not just

for my education. I had the weirdest meeting

with a Scottish filmmaker who was also born

in the John Radcliffe.

A level results come out tomorrow,

and it strikes me that exactly 16 years

after your results came out, your first

feature film is being released in the

UK. It’s quite a journey…

I can’t believe it was exactly 16 years ago!

After I left school, I didn’t know what I

wanted to do and was sitting at home doing

nothing. My mum made me an appointment

with Mr Fletcher who was in charge of UCAS

at the time. I ended up filling out all the forms

with Law as my first five choices. For my sixth

I just flicked through the book and found War

Studies at King’s, randomly put it down, and

then received an offer. It was a great course

and I actually used a lot of it in the film. It’s a

multidisciplinary course which helps you as a

film director as you are constantly having to

think in different ways.

How did you get from King’s to where

you are now?

I always wanted to do film, but always

thought I had to go into the army, because

I come from a military background. But

when I finished university, I realised I could

go and do what I wanted and never looked

back. It was very difficult. I couldn’t get an

internship anywhere, even with connections

so I waitered and laid floors for a year and

then managed to get two unpaid internships

in a documentary company. But all the time

I was writing and my second screenplay got

me into the Sundance Screenwriters’ Lab and

that really changed my life. I’ve been writing

for ten years, and made one short film

before making my first feature. If you want

to go into film in any discipline, you really

have to love what you do and be stubborn,

as it’s a long process. A lot of people fall by

the wayside.

So in retrospect, what would you have

told 18-year-old you lying around on

the sofa afterA levels?

Get up, go out and live some life. Do

anything, but have an experience. Travel.

Don’t be afraid to fail. I failed for 10 years;

I spent five years working on a screenplay

that never saw the light of day and it broke

my heart. But as a filmmaker that was a key

FromApsley to

the Academy Awards