Rana Abu Fraihah

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Rana Abu Fraihah (born October 8, 1990, in Tel Sheva, Israel) is an Israeli documentary filmmaker and videographer. She is best known for the film In Her Footsteps, which tells the story of her family.

Her mother, Rudaina, was an English teacher, and her father, Awda, is a Bedouin transportation engineer who grew up in poverty. Her mother was an Israeli-Arab from the village of Gath in the Triangle. Rana is one of five children; her sister Yasmeen is a physician and activist, and her brother Ameer works in technology after being known as a math prodigy.

As a child, Rana competed in math contests and was chosen for a Ben Gurion University program for gifted students in fifth grade. At age five, her family moved to Omer, a nearby Jewish city, becoming one of the first Bedouin families there. Omer was mostly Jewish and nationalist, and growing up there was challenging. Rana has described how the move exposed her to two different worlds and how she later learned to embrace both her Arab/Bedouin and Israeli identities.

She studied architecture, then documentary filmmaking, at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. She also works as a counselor for Looking Forward, an organization that helps talented youth from peripheral communities prepare for higher education in film, television, and the arts.

Filmmaking began as a personal outlet for Rana’s feelings about belonging and family. When she was 13, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. The project shifted to document Rudaina’s struggle to be buried in Omer, where religious law separates burial spaces and Muslim women cannot be buried in the local cemetery. The film thus became a meditation on identity, belonging, and choice, reflecting Rana’s own journey as a child growing up between cultures.

“Education was a top priority in my family,” Rana has said, noting that the move to Omer was partly to support that value. In Her Footsteps premiered at the Jerusalem International Film Festival in 2017, winning the Van Leer Award for best directing. It was later shown in cinematheques across Israel and in Arab and Bedouin communities, sparking wide public discussion. The film also earned several awards, including Best Documentary at the Berlin Jewish Film Festival, the Shulamit Aloni Prize for Human Rights, and an Ophir Award for Best Documentary.