His great uncle is legendary Palestinian actor Mohammad Bakri, so it is easy to see why 21-year-old Muhammed Abed El Rahman became fascinated with cinema. And in just two features, El Rahman has proved to be a chip off the old block.
In Firas Khoury’s Alam, El Rahman plays a Palestinian schoolkid who, as part of a prank, replaces the Israeli flag on top of his school, while in Farah Nabulsi’s Toronto breakout The Teacher, he plays traumatised teenager Adam, whose teacher becomes a father figure to him.
The young actor’s screen presence stems from his ability to say so much without words, something he credits to Bakri’s son and Wajib star Saleh Bakri, who taught El Rahman to play chess as a child. “Saleh helped me a lot in this regard, making me feel comfortable being silent. He pushed me a lot.”
El Rahman, who lives near Haifa, was born in 2002 in Bi’na, a village in the Upper Galilee region. He remembers being interested in storytelling and books, and was constantly writing stories through elementary school. “I never acted when I was young,” he says. “We didn’t have a cinema, theatre or drama class in school.”
At 18, fresh out of school, he made a short film Anas with videographer and producer Mohammed Zein El Dein of Kwindy Productions. El Rahman wrote, directed and starred in the movie, which he describes as being “about the violence on the Arabs in our society. It showcases a young man having troubles with his family and how he ended up in this environment.”
He uploaded Anas onto Instagram, and within a week it had 40,000 views. It was down to his social-media prowess that directors Khoury and Nabulsi took note. “Farah contacted me when I was working on Firas’s film,” he says. “She also followed me on Instagram after watching Anas.”
After a Zoom meeting, El Rahman successfully auditioned to play the quiet Adam. Arriving on set, he was surprised to see Saleh had been cast as the teacher that Adam sees as a father figure — a case of art imitating life. “Without the Bakris, would I be acting? I don’t know.”
Contact: Muhammad Abed El Rahman
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