Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#4297
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Alaa Safi works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Alaa Safi appears in 12 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Alaa. Coming Home is the clearest case: a film rated 10.0 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for drama, action, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Dallas Jenkins, James Mangold, Alaa Safi and others, Alaa Safi helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
Coming Home (2023) as Silas Moore · Doctor Strange (2016) as Tall Zealot · The Mauritanian (2021) as Moroccan Translator / Marseille
Career snapshot
Ranked #4297 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
12
2008–2027
Career length
19 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
10.0
Coming Home
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
10.0
Coming Home
Most frequent director
Alaa Safi
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Alaa Safi
Most common genre
Action
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 32m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.4
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
2000s
6.7 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Traitor — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.7
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.7
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Traitor.
Most productive era
2020s
7 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.71 film | — | 5.74 films |
| Action | 6.71 film | 6.54 films | 6.02 films |
| Thriller | 6.71 film | 6.02 films | 6.53 films |
| Crime | 6.71 film | — | 6.41 film |
| Horror | — | 5.51 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2008Traitor
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Omar's Crew.
First Nutevio masterpiece · Highest rated performance · Career peak
2023Coming Home
The first film here to clear 9.0 on our scale — a threshold fewer than one film in ten reaches. 10.0 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
The current state of the argument, as Simon Z.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
12 of 12 films
as Silas Moore
Directed by Alaa Safi
as Tall Zealot
Directed by Scott Derrickson
as Moroccan Translator / Marseille
Directed by Kevin Macdonald
as Omar's Crew
Directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Silas Moore
Coming Home (2023)
Performance score9.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Silas Moore gives Alaa Safi a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Tall Zealot
Doctor Strange (2016)
Performance score7.5
Doctor Strange asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Tall Zealot is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Moroccan Translator / Marseille
The Mauritanian (2021)
Performance score7.2
The Mauritanian asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Moroccan Translator / Marseille is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Omar's Crew
Traitor (2008)
Performance score6.6
Traitor asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Omar's Crew is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Silas Moore
Start here. Coming Home is the clearest statement of what Alaa Safi does — accessible, 29 minutes, and rated 10.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Alaa at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
Traitor (2008)
Keeps the drama register of Coming Home but asks for a colder reading of it.
Doctor Strange (2016)
Keeps the action register of Traitor but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Mauritanian (2021)
A deliberate change of key after Doctor Strange — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Chosen: Crucifixion (2027)
Keeps the drama register of The Mauritanian but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Alaa Safi
Director
2 films together
Notably Coming Home
Jeffrey Nachmanoff
Director
1 film together
Notably Traitor
Jackie Chan
Director
1 film together
Notably Chinese Zodiac
Scott Derrickson
Director
1 film together
Notably Doctor Strange
Alex Kurtzman
Director
1 film together
Notably The Mummy
Michael Cuesta
Director
1 film together
Notably American Assassin
Kevin Macdonald
Director
1 film together
Notably The Mauritanian
Kenneth Branagh
Director
1 film together
Notably Death on the Nile
James Mangold
Director
1 film together
Notably Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Dallas Jenkins
Director
1 film together
Notably The Chosen: Crucifixion
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Alaa Safi
Director
2 films together · 7.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Coming HomeScott Derrickson
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Doctor StrangeKevin Macdonald
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The MauritanianJeffrey Nachmanoff
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
TraitorJames Mangold
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Indiana Jones and the Dial of DestinyKenneth Branagh
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Death on the NileMichael Cuesta
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
American AssassinJackie Chan
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Chinese ZodiacAlex Kurtzman
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The MummyDallas Jenkins
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Chosen: CrucifixionSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Coming Home
as Silas Moore
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Coming Home
as Silas Moore
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Coming Home
as Silas Moore
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Mummy
as Sickle Slave
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Coming Home
as Silas Moore
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Alaa Safi has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Action Legend
Awarded
7 catalogue titles in action, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Coming Home
as Silas Moore
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Coming Home
as Silas Moore
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Coming Home
as Silas Moore
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Death on the Nile
as Corporal
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Coming Home
as Silas Moore
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
as Rahim
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Traitor
as Omar's Crew
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Doctor Strange
as Tall Zealot
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Jamie Harris
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Elliot Page
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Christian Bale
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Have your say
Community
Which Alaa Safi performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
Join the conversation
Reference
Continue exploring
Trending performers
Directors they work with
Collections to read next
