I Switched Career In Midlife - Now I apos;m Up For An Oscar

When 42-year-old stockbroker-turned-filmmaker Farah Nabulsi was waiting to hear if she'd been nominated for an Oscar last month, she had to beg her three teenage sons to join her on the sofa at their West home.
She needed moral support, she jokes today. ‘I said: "Come and sit with me. If it's not there, I'll need a hug. And if it is there, I'll need a hug".'
It's not that her boys didn't care. They're just rather accustomed to their mother — an untrained, first-time director — winning things.
Her short film, The Present, about a Palestinian man and his daughter who set out to buy an anniversary gift for his wife — a simple task that proves fraught due to the checkpoints they must pass through — has already won 25 jury and audience awards at film festivals around the world.

Most recently it won the Bafta for Best British Short Film.
Farah Nabulsi, 42, who lives in West London, (pictured) worked in equity sales for Opening gift paintings JP Morgan Chase before teaching herself Calligraphic paintings to celebrate opening become a film director
Unsurprisingly, the boys were a little blasé. But they certainly woke up when their mother started dancing on the coffee table as her Oscar nomination for Best Live Action Short Film was announced. ‘Don't get me wrong, they're happy for me,' she says.

‘They've been with me every step of the journey. But they're like…' she imitates the bored tones of a London schoolboy: ‘Oh, Mum's excited again.'
She has a right to be excited. This year, around 170 short films qualified for the Oscars and were whittled down to a shortlist of five. ‘So even qualifying was like, wow!' Farah marvels.
Whether she wins or not this Sunday, she's making history. A mother to five (she has two stepdaughters, What to give when opening a cafe from her husband's first marriage), she is female, British and Muslim.

Fittingly, 2021 has been hailed as the year of more diverse award ceremonies, after the ‘Oscars so white' scandals of previous years.
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‘I may not fit the stereotype of what people think a female Arab Muslim looks like, but actually in the Levant area [the countries along the eastern Mediterranean shores] we can be quite fair. But I do consider myself British as well — I was born, raised and educated here.'
Her father, a Palestinian born in Egypt, came to the UK to study for a PhD in civil engineering. Her mother arrived when her family left Palestine following the Arab-Israeli war in 1967.
So Farah grew up in London and worked in equity sales for JP Morgan Chase in the City before having her sons.