Dina Najjar is an award-winning actor and filmmaker. She is a first-generation Arab American (Palestinian/Jordanian) born in Detroit to immigrant parents.
Some of the roles she's proudest of include: playing Maya, a Syrian refugee searching for her place in America, in the short film "Maya" which earned her the Best Actress Award at the 2018 University of Miami Canes Film Festival; recurring as alluring assassin Nadja Shah in season 2 of "The Family Business" on BET and Netflix; playing Dr. Dulce, a pediatric dentist who loves talking about teeth in Nickelodeon's Noggin Knows; and leading the feature film, "The Refugee", for which she won Best Actress at the 2024 Golden Door International Film Festival and is featured on Variety.
In 2015, in an effort to start creating opportunities for herself and fellow actors, Dina started making her own films. Her mission is to bring diversity without stereotypes to the screen and stage and to tell important stories that inspire, empower, and include. She strives to portray and write interesting and multifaceted female characters who overcome adversity and trauma while infusing it with humor. Dina wants to see people depicted as multidimensional characters, not as predetermined stereotypes of an ethnicity. Her through line is belonging and the themes she explores are complex familial relationships and generational trauma. She always aims to leave her viewers with a sense of hope. She has never felt like she truly belongs, so telling the stories of the underdog that perseveres, the traumas that shape us, and searching for our place in the world -- those are the stories Dina connects to and wishes to tell. And most importantly, her goal is to give a voice to Palestinian and Arab stories that humanize them instead of capitalize on their trauma. She truly believe it's important to create what you want to be a part of.
Dina's comedy pilot, "Casting Josie", was a Semifinalist in the ScreenCraft TV Pilot Script Competition (2021).