NAJWA NIMRI

Born into a family of doctors, Najwa Nimri is the daughter of a Jordanian father and a Navarrese mother. She came into this world in Navarre in 1972 and grew up in the Bilbao district of Santuchu. Passionate about sports liker skateboarding or surfing, and a member of several jazz and soul choirs in her youth, she entered the world of cinema when she had just turned 23, starring Daniel Calparsoro’s ground-breaking feature debut ‘Jumping Into the Void, which competed in the Panorama section of the Berlinale. The film aroused the interest of professionals like Pedro Almodóvar, whose production company El Deseo launched his next film, ‘Pasages’, selected for participation in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight. After working again with Calparsoro in ‘Blinded’, which screened at the Venice Film Festival, and filming under the orders of Alejandro Amenábar in ‘Open your eyes’, she joined the cast of Julio Medem’s ‘Lovers of the Arctic Circle’, where she played one of her most memorable characters (Ana) for which she received the first of her five nominations for the Goya Awards.

That same year (1998) , she partnered with music producer Carlos Jean in order to form the NajwaJean band. Together they released their first album, ‘No Blood’, which revolutionized electronic music in Spain at the turn of the new millennium. Music and film, film and music, have been at the centre of her life ever since, providing a vehicle for torrent of creativity of an artist who has become one of the most powerful faces and voices of Spanish cinema and music of the last three decades.

Her career includes a dozen albums (half of them with Carlos Jean and the other half as a solo artist ) and about thirty films directed by filmmakers like Julian Schnabel, La Fura dels Baus, Ramón Salazar, María Ripoll, Marcelo Piñeyro, Antoni Chavarrías, Icíar Bollaín, Gonzalo Suárez, Ken Loach, Achero Mañas or Carlos Vermut, with whom she made a glorious return to the front line of Spanish cinema after her five-year absence from the silver screen thanks to her resounding performance as Lila in ‘Quién te cantará’.