Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#8067
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Ali Suliman 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.
Ali Suliman appears in 13 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Ali. Arthur the King is the clearest case: a film rated 7.5 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, quiet performance, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for drama, action, mystery. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Patricia Riggen, Simon Cellan Jones, Peter Berg and others, Ali Suliman 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.
Arthur the King (2024) as Chik · The Swimmers (2022) as Ezzat Mardini · Lone Survivor (2013) as Mohammad Gulab
Career snapshot
Ranked #8067 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
13
2007–2025
Career length
18 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.5
Arthur the King
Average Nutevio score
5.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.5
Arthur the King
Most frequent director
Peter Berg
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Peter Berg
Most common genre
Drama
12 titles
Average runtime
1h 38m
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
6.2
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
2010s
6.8 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Maradona's Legs, It Must Be Heaven, Lone Survivor — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.8
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.8
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. Body of Lies, The Kingdom.
Most productive era
2020s
8 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 | 6.72 films | 6.83 films | 4.97 films |
| Action | 6.72 films | 7.41 film | 6.31 film |
| Thriller | 6.72 films | — | 6.11 film |
| Comedy | — | 6.52 films | 7.01 film |
| Romance | — | — | 7.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2007The Kingdom
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Sergeant Haytham.
Career peak
2021Abdelinho
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
2024Arthur the King
7.5 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
2025Coyotes
The current state of the argument, as Mukhlis.
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.
13 of 13 films
as Chik
Directed by Simon Cellan Jones
as Mohammad Gulab
Directed by Peter Berg
as Ezzat Mardini
Directed by Unknown
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
Chik
Arthur the King (2024)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Chik gives Ali Suliman a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
AMER Taleb
Abdelinho (2021)
Performance score7.6
Abdelinho asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. AMER Taleb is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Mohammad Gulab
Lone Survivor (2013)
Performance score7.5
Lone Survivor asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mohammad Gulab is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Ezzat Mardini
The Swimmers (2022)
Performance score7.2
The Swimmers asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Ezzat Mardini 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 Chik
Start here. Arthur the King is the clearest statement of what Ali Suliman does — accessible, 107 minutes, and rated 7.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Ali 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.
Lone Survivor (2013)
Keeps the drama register of Arthur the King but asks for a colder reading of it.
It Must Be Heaven (2019)
Keeps the drama register of Lone Survivor but asks for a colder reading of it.
Abdelinho (2021)
Same director as It Must Be Heaven, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
The Swimmers (2022)
Same director as Abdelinho, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Peter Berg
Director
2 films together · 7.1 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Lone SurvivorSimon Cellan Jones
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Arthur the King
Ridley Scott
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Body of LiesPatricia Riggen
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
G20Six 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
The Swimmers
as Ezzat Mardini
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Abdelinho
as AMER Taleb
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Arthur the King
as Chik
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Swimmers
as Ezzat Mardini
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Arthur the King
as Chik
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. Ali Suliman 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
12 catalogue titles in drama, 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
Arthur the King
as Chik
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Kingdom
as Sergeant Haytham
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Abdelinho
as AMER Taleb
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
G20
as Agent Adwi
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Arthur the King
as Chik
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Kingdom
as Sergeant Haytham
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Abdelinho
as AMER Taleb
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Kingdom
as Sergeant Haytham
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Reference
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