Georges Nasser

Nasser was born in Tripoli on 15 June 1927,[3] the fifth of 11 children. He attended the School of the Holy Hearts until the age of 7 and then the College of the Brothers of the Holy Family. During his childhood he was a keen fan of film, watching up to eight a week at the cinema.[4] Nasser moved to California to attend UCLA and became one the first Arab filmmakers to obtain a film degree in the United States.[5] Though he had originally intended to study architecture as he was unaware that cinema studies was a subject. At UCLA he met fellow film students George Roy Hill and John Ford.[4]

After graduating from UCLA in the mid-50s, he returned to Lebanon to direct his first feature, Ila Ayn (1957), which became the first Lebanese film to be featured In Selection at Cannes Film Festival.[6] After sixty years, the film was screened again in its restored print version as part of the Cannes Classics events in 2017,[7] after which Nasser, who is known as the "Father of Lebanese Cinema" received a standing ovation.[8] Although his career was cut short by the Lebanese civil war, he has mentored a new generation of Lebanese filmmakers[2] as an instructor at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts.[9] Nasser also attempted to establish a film-making syndicate in the aftermath of the war.[10] In the 1990s he began a project to create a film of the life of Egyptian actress Faten Hamama entitled Lee Ouyon al-Nas but it was never completed.[10] In his late career he completed several short films for the Lebanese Army.[10] He died on 23 January 2019, aged 91 and was buried at the St. Maroun Church in Tripoli on 24 January.[11][10][12]