Young Emirati actor and film director Nawaf Al-Janahi has taken a very important step in making a feature narrative film entitled The Circle, presenting himself as a director mastering his cinematic tools, and submitting the technology to the account of dramatic material which is full of moving human conditions. In a sensitive language and a real passion for the creative scene, he succeeded in making the image a modest reflection of the human entity, and in transferring the optical tape into a mirror of reality and details. He accomplished a screenplay that was weaved with a professional talent that is capable of developing and improving the conditions of its own functioning.

With a reasonable level of creative tools, he made the human subject-matter a foundation for a work focused on reading situations, not to merely photograph events and characters. By going into the depth of the character’s entity, its spirit and emotions, amid a corrupted world that is infested with calamity and oppression, he freed his adaptation to a Western cinema from any dependence or imitation, because he knew how to set a serious distance between what he watches and his own ideas. And because he showed a coy cinematic talent in his short films (On a Road, Souls, and Mirrors of Silence), he seemed closer to a professional craftsmanship accomplishing his feature film The Circle. This professionalism is clear in several artistic levels, such as lighting, dramatic narrative, cinematography, and character development. Despite few flaws that did not affect dramatically the general atmosphere of the film, these imperfections seemed normal, as they appeared in the "first feature film", even though Al-Janahi has made short films that were not less important than The Circle.

Nawaf Al-Janahi did not want to go into the pure Emirati environment, and did not attempt an absolute imitation of the Western dramatic trend. He stayed away from the two sides, by choosing a purely human material that is focused on friendship and its lack because of money and greed, love and its brokenness in front of illness and death, brotherhood and its loss amid the daily deadly collapses. The young director, who also wrote the screenplay, seemed a real analyst of the conditions of the moment, the entity, and the human environment, when he linked the fate of a number of characters who do not know each other while destiny, albeit indirectly, formed a connection between them: three young men carrying suspicious acts to the benefit of a gang leader, one of them is captured by a man who happens to be a journalist, an honest businessman, a lover, and ill to death, who works out a deal with him to execute a job "stealing" money from his partner who stole it from him without a blink of an eye. The young thief is involved in such acts in order to protect his sister from the troubles of life, and the journalist is a lover who adores his beautiful wife, and the world in which they live is corrupted, crazy and cruel; as much as life’s cruelty and destiny’s curse.

With a vital and beautiful language that is not without minor flaws, Nawaf Al-Janahi made a film that can not be overlooked for its beautiful cinematic aspects, and the heightened sensitivity of its director. The Circle is a sincere declaration of the birth of a talented director, whom the concerned individuals of the film industry hope that he is given serious opportunities to develop his creative tools.