Born in Alexandria, Egypt in 1981, Adolf El Assal grew up in Dubai, London and Luxembourg. After graduating with a MA in Filmmaking from Kingston University in the United Kingdom, he won his spurs while working on several video clips and TV shorts, and worked as a producer on Divizionz (2008) which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and went on to be selected at over 100 festivals. He has since directed a couple of short films including the award-winning La Fameuse Route… (2011) and Mano de Dios (2011). He completed his first feature, The Notorious Guys in 2014. Sawah (2019) is his latest feature film.