Palestinian actor Ali Suliman was born in Nazareth in 1977, the son of a family exiled from its village of Safouryia in Galilee during the Nakba of 1948. After graduating from the Levinishtain Acting School in 2000, his first roles were in the theater, playing complex characters including classical drama and comedy. The year 2004 was a milestone in his career with the lead role in Hany Abu Assad’s Paradise Now, winner of a Golden Globe award and nominee for an Academy Award in 2005. The film also launched his international film career. In Hollywood, he got to work with filmmakers as Ridley Scott in Body of Lies in 2008 and with Peter Berg in The Kingdom in 2007 and in Lone Survivor in 2013, as well as with artist Kanye West in his short film Cruel Summer in 2012. In the Arab World, he actively collaborated with Elia Suleiman, from Chronicle of a Disappearance (1996) to the acclaimed It Must Be Heaven in 2019.
His many acting credits include The Last Friday by Yahya Al Abdallah (Jordan) in 2011, for which he was awarded Best Actor at both Dubai and Carthage film festivals in 2011 and 2012 respectively, Rattle the Cage by Majid Al Ansari (UAE) in 2015 and more recently The River by Ghassan Salhab (Lebanon) in 2021. For his role of Mustafa in Ameen Nayfeh’s feature debut 200 Meters (Palestine) in 2020, Suleiman won the Star for Best Actor at the 2020 El Gouna Film Festival.