Lotfy Nathan is an Egyptian-American director. His first feature, the documentary 12 O'Clock Boys, for which he won the HBO 'Emerging Artists' award, was selected by more than 50 international festivals and optioned by Will Smith’s company Overbrook Entertainment for a film adaptation. With Harka, he took part in the Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab in 2016 and won the prize as best work in progress at the Red Sea Souk, part of the Red Sea IFF 2021. The film was presented at Cannes in 2022 in the Un Certain Regard section.