Lubna Azabal

Lubna Azabal — Biography

Lubna Azabal was born on 15 August 1973 in Brussels to a Moroccan father and a Spanish mother, and speaks French, English, Arabic and Berber. After training at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, she began a theatre career in Belgium from 1995 and made her film debut in 1997 in Vincent Lannoo's short film J'adore le cinéma opposite Olivier Gourmet. Following the Golden Globe-nominated Palestinian film Paradise Now (2005) and a supporting role in Ridley Scott's Body of Lies (2008), her lead performance as Nawal Marwan in Incendies (2010) won her the Genie, Jutra and Vancouver Film Critics Circle awards and, in 2012, the Magritte Award for Best Actress. She starred alongside Maggie Gyllenhaal in the BBC miniseries The Honourable Woman (2014). She won two further Magritte Awards, for The Marchers (2015) and Above the Law (2019), and was named Best Actress at the 2023 Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival for Amal; she was also Magritte-nominated for Goodbye Morocco, Tel Aviv on Fire and Adam. Her international work includes Coriolanus, The Blue Caftan and Rebel, and she has continued acting with You Promised Me the Sea (2023), Somewhere in Love (2024) and Hot Water (2026).