Independent Cinematic Practitioner & Cultural Worker 

I’m a

with a deep investment in the democratization of cinema and its technological resources.

RUUN NUUR is an independent cinematic practitioner with a diasporic gaze hyper-focused on African and Muslim peoples.

She is the Creative Producer of the Field of Vision commissioned documentary short, They Won’t Call It Murder (2022), a poetic exploration of Columbus, Ohio as a container of violence perpetrated by the local police force. The film was selected as a Vimeo Staff Pick and played at Sheffield Doc/Fest, BAMcinemafest, Camden International Film Festival, AFI Festival, DOCNYC and more.

As the co-founder of the nomadic microcinema, NO EVIL EYE CINEMA, Nuur has organized accessible education workshops and original film curation around the country and online. As a college student, she created SVLLY(wood), an alternative independent feminist print film magazine that was cited by Interview Magazine as "the vanguard of a new age of underground cinephilia".

She’s served on the juries of Sheffield Doc/Fest, Indie Memphis and has been an invited guest speaker for Doha Film Institute, True/False Film Festival, New York Film Festival, and many more. Her essays and interviews have been published in Film Comment, i-D, DAZED, Hyperallergic among other multimedia platforms. Her work has been profiled in NYLON, Brooklyn Rail, and scholarly journals.

Nuur has been named the 2022-24 Artist Residency Award at Wexner Center for the Arts and currently the 2022 Tejumola Olaniyan Creative Writers-in-Residence Fellowship, working on a documentary feature on the many cycles of her homeland of Somalia.

Mubi/The Notebook- The Evolving Visual Multitudes of Ja'Tovia Gary

Wexner Center for the Arts - Cinema Revival: Exhibition as Activation

Artist Space - The Inherent Cinematic Transgression of Bill Gunn- print catalog for the exhibition, Till They Listen:  Bill Gunn Directs America

Kino Lorber - Hyenas (1992) Blu-Ray DVD booklet introduction

MUBI/The Notebook - When an Immigrant's Familial Bonds are as Foreign as the Land: Ekwa Msangi Discusses ‘Farewell Amor’

Hyperallergic - An Essential Watchlist of Groundbreaking Black Documentaries


PBS/Independent Lens - Rural Perspective on Mental Health Care in a Time of Crisis

Hyperallergic - Processing Mortality With Cinema

Hyperallergic - In Maine, a Space to Spur Change in Documentary

Hyperallergic - What Happened When a Filmmaker Asked Black Women Whether They Feel Safe

Reverse Shot - First Look 2019: Ambulante Más Allá

Wexner Center for the Arts - Examining‘Personal Problems’

The FADER - In a year obsessed with skating, this film is a true peek into the always-evolving subculture

Wexner Center for the Arts - Grace Jones & Jean-Michel Basquiat: Iconoclasts in motion

Film Comment - Interview: Khalik Allah for BLACK MOTHER

DAZED - The 2000s lesbian strip club party that helped define club culture today

Film Comment - The Night Walker *behind a paywall*

Hyperallergic - A History of Protest and Activism at the Oscars 

The Lily/Washington Post - These Black women are working to take down R. Kelly 

Wexner Center for the Arts - Soleil Ô and the expansion of the African image 

Fandor - Love, Uninterrupted 

Reverse Shot - First Look 2018: Taste of Cement 

Filmmaker Magazine - Keeping Print Criticism Alive in the Digital Age 

afterHOURS - 10 subversive, feminist horror films to check out this Halloween 

indieWIRE - Race, Religion, Immigration: 5 New Documentaries That Capture Our Divided Times 

i-D - where were all the female directors at the vmas?

Okay Africa - ‘Your Story Matters:’ Heidi Saman’s Blueprint to Making a Successful Debut Feature 

MUBI - Women in Revolt: An International Women's Day Film Syllabus 

Real Life Magazine:

1) Defending Your Life
2) Body Cam

Media Diversified - Angela Bassett, the genius that defies age 

TIFF/The Review - Med Hondo is the African Auteur You Need to See 

Little White Lies - Is Western cinema ready to challenge Muslim stereotypes? 

cléo journal - Permission, Power, and Privilege: An Interview with Kirsten Johnson 








Columbus Alive: Community feature: Local publication makes room for unheard voices in film criticism (spring 2018, print and digital)

Co-Founder of NO EVIL EYE CINEMA 

NO EVIL EYE is a nomadic micro-cinema that aims to redefine the creative and social parameters of film scene(s) by curating an eclectic mix of films and accessible educational workshops made for and by inclusive audiences. 

Since our launch in May 2019, we’ve been invited to engage in a variety of unique spaces and places including institutions, film festivals, underground theaters, and DIY organizations around the country. 

Our mission is to reimagine the traditional filmic experience by promoting a realistic yet utopian vision of cinema as a space of socio-political possibilities. We’re interested in igniting a collective radical imagination around the moving image that moves beyond the status quo.

Founder and Managing Editor of SVLLY(wood) Magazine

An irregular print and digital movie magazine geared toward curating a radical cinephilia. Currently on hiatus due to funding.  

SVLLY(wood) published three issues during its tenure and was read around the world. Mentions from Filmmaker Magazine, Interview Magazine, and more.

“be patient, a beautiful patience” (فَاصْبِرْ صَبْرًا جَمِيلً) (fasbir sabran jameela) (70:5)

“be patient, a beautiful patience” (فَاصْبِرْ صَبْرًا جَمِيلً) (fasbir sabran jameela) (70:5)

〰️

“be patient, a beautiful patience” (فَاصْبِرْ صَبْرًا جَمِيلً) (fasbir sabran jameela) (70:5) “be patient, a beautiful patience” (فَاصْبِرْ صَبْرًا جَمِيلً) (fasbir sabran jameela) (70:5) 〰️

INVITED SPEAKER

  • Lafayette College: Film and Media Studies Lecturer  

  • Doha Film Institute

  • New York Film Festival

  • Wexner Center for the Arts

  • Another Gaze 

  • New Orleans Film Festival

  • True/False Film Festival

  • Museum of the Moving Image 

  • Images Film Festival

  • Melbourne International Film Festival

INVITED JURY MEMBER

Cleveland International Film Festival (2023) -------- New Direction Competition Jury 

Sheffield Doc/Festival (2018) -------- New Talent Jury 

Indie Memphis Film Festival (2018) -------- Indie Grants Jury and Black Filmmaker Residency and Fellowship.

The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (2017) -------- Judge for the Short Form Fiction at the 53rd Annual Ohio Valley Regional Emmy® Awards.

Untitled Doc Feature

Title: Writer-Producer-Director

Status: In-Production

Profiling the many cycles of making and unmaking of a lost film and the nation that produced it.

They Won’t Call It Murder (2022) dir Ingrid Raphaël and Melissa Gira Grant

Status: Available to watch

Title: Producer

Bound by grief, five women in Columbus, Ohio reclaim the voices of their loved ones from the police who killed them. Together, they confront the impossibility of receiving justice from a system which has stolen the lives of their family members.

GLOBAL RELEASE: Vimeo Staff Pick 2022
WORLD PREMIERE: Sheffield Doc/Fest 2021
US PREMIERE: BAMcinemafest 2021

Official Selection: 
Camden International Film Festival 2021
AFI Festival/Meet the Press 2021
the opening night film of Unorthodocs Documentary Film Festival 2021
DOCNYC 2021

  • Documentary Producing & Directing

  • Somali Cinematic Scholarship

  • Curriculum and Education Design

  • Teaching & Original Workshops 

  • Film Programming

  • Creative Nonfiction

  • Documentary Film Criticism 

  • Radical, Alternative, and Political Cinemas

  • Black/African Diasporic Cinemas

  • Restoration and Cinematic Preservation of Global South Cinemas

  • Muslims and Islam in Media Theory  

  • Press Relations Design and Direction

Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio  

The Africa Institute in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates 

International Documentary Awards (IDA) in Los Angeles, California 

Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio 

  • Film/Video Studio Residency (Fall 2021) 

Film at Lincoln Center in New York, NY

ruuntheenuur[at]gmail[dot]com

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