Samira Saraya

Samira Saraya was born in 1975 in Haifa

Saraya was born in Haifa to Nimr and Subahiya Saraya. She is the 11th of their 13 children.

At 19 she moved to Jerusalem to study nursing at the Hebrew University. She then worked at Ichilov hospital in Tel Aviv in oncology and hematology, taught at a nursing college and ran a private immunotherapy clinic.

She took an acting workshop in Lod in 1997 and joined the Tel Aviv fringe scene in 1998, where she performed drag and began to rap. From 2003 she performed as Samimo, the first Palestinian drag king.

Her first film role came in 2008, and in 2011 she played Amal in the series Minimum Wage. She later starred in Self Made and won the Best Actress award at the Jerusalem Film Festival for Death of a Poetess. She also had guest roles in Fauda and Sirens.

In 2016 she enrolled in the Tel Aviv University film school. She wrote, directed and starred in the short film Polygraph, which premiered in 2020.