Writer/director Nuh Omar shot by Khawer Jadoon
While most of his peers were preoccupied with building Lego structures just to knock them down, giving Barbie a make-over or engaging their Transformers in a mock-war against the Decepticons, Nuh Omar was busy using these “toy” tools to create stories that he would someday bring to the big screen.
After discovering his passion for story telling as a child, Nuh spent years using his toys as the main characters of the stories he both created and captured on film with his mother’s video camera.
Today, as a successful director Nuh has an incredible amount of resources at his disposal; however, he continues to use his Transformers and other action figures of yore as tools for effective storyboarding.
What separates this talented young creative from most other writer/directors is his ability to draw from his imagination an astonishing mélange of stories.
Bringing together elements of the abstract and real world in style known as magical realism, Nuh erects his characters on film in a beautiful way.
“My style takes the real world and mixes in the abnormal as if it was something ordinary, something you see everyday,” says Nuh. “There’s a sense of nostalgia I try and invoke into my films. I try to make each one reach out and connect with something in the audiences’ past, something we all have in common, and that varies from project to project, but the sense of it remains the same across.”
As co-director of the film Lazy Accident, which was shot on 16mm film stock, Nuh executed his directorial vision with seamless precision bringing to life a visually captivating meta-science fiction satire about a group of Gametes racing to meet their destiny where only one will survive.
“I remember reading this script, written by co-directs Justin Graniero and Michael Robertson, and being blown away… this was the script that I knew I had to work on,” recalls Nuh. ” Our approach to the film was to keep the share of comedy and the ‘darker’ elements juxtaposed equally throughout the film.”
Nuh’s inquisitive nature and his ability to blend opposites, like the dark and dramatic with the light-hearted and comedic, and the real with the surreal, give all of his films something of a philosophical undertone.
He says, “My inspiration comes from wanting to know the answer to the outlandish questions that pop into my head. I believe at the core of every story is a question, so I get inspired by, say, reading the news and wondering; what happens next? I always want to know what happens after the credits role, what’s left over, why do or don’t things happen a certain way.”
He is currently working on a film that begs us to question what happens to imaginary friends after the imaginer grows out of them. The film is currently titled Untitled Imaginary Friends Project, but that will change before it gets closer to release in 2017.
His love for film as a platform for storytelling has led him to take on a variety of roles in the industry, which includes everything from writing, directing, producing and working as a 1st AD.
As the 1st AD on Jason DeParis’s (Love Disease, Dust to Dust, The Worst Day Ever, Dogs vs Robots) film Timeless, Nuh was responsible managing practically the entire crew and creating a production schedule that would help the film come in on time and within the allotted budget.
“It was about doing what I could to take the burden off director Jason DeParis, who was a joy to work under… So as a 1st AD on the set, it was about running the team to set in motion what needed to be done to reach Jason’s vision,” explains Nuh.
“You’re always on your feet, something is always happening; you’re always making sure that every one is in the right place… It comes down to responsibility; you could be managing six people on a rooftop in Brooklyn or a few dozen people in a cold sound stage. If the director is the captain of the ship, the 1st AD is the first mate.”
Based on the true story of Sheila Marden who is played by Emmy nominated actress Jennifer Bassey (All My Children, 30 Rock, Grey’s Anatomy), Timeless follows an aging mother who suffered from a brain cancer tumor, but due to a misdiagnosis is committed to a psychiatric ward where she undergoes unnecessary psychiatric treatment.
Timeless received the Juror’s Award at the 2011 Louisville Film & Video Festival, as well as an award at the Milano International Film Festival Awards in 2013.
Nuh Omar also worked as the 1st AD on the horror film DUI, the writer and producer of the award-winning film We’re Americans, Eh?, the director of the film Close to Heaven, as well as the documentarian on the award-winning film Loves Me Not. All of these experiences have served him well, providing him with exponential insight into almost every aspect of creating a film and the integral roles each contributor plays.
Although Nuh spent most of his youth between Canada and the U.S., he was originally born in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest metropolitan city; and, upon returning there three years ago, his creative talents as both a writer and director caught the attention of an impressive list of global corporations and advertising agencies.
Pakistan’s DeVida Lifestyle Channel, a fashion forward television station owned by a leading international textile company known as the Fateh Group, enlisted Omar’s services as the director of a promo for Bagori TV, one of the channel’s original television series, as well as DeVida bumpers featuring Pakistani celebrities.
He was also hired by iGlow Studios, a make-up studio in Saudi Arabia owned by Nilo Haq, the Beauty Editor for Destination Jeddah Magazine and JeddahBeautyBlog.com, to direct their “Looks that Glow” spot.
About what motivates him to work as both a director and writer, Nuh says, “Directing keeps me engaged with people and expressing myself in person through a verbal and physical means, where as writing can be very personal, deeper, and emotionally impactful on oneself. Its having both worlds, and this is one of the rare fields where can juggle two things you like.”
Well, while many might dream of doing so, not everyone can successfully juggle both the job of a writer and director in the competitive world of film; but, Nuh Omar has shown that his unique talents have clearly allotted him the capacity to be one of the rare individuals who can.