Naomi Campbell finally explains her relationship with Mohammed Al Turki as she shares gushing birthday tribute - after years of romance speculation
Over the years, fans have frequently called for the pair to get together, commenting on their many Instagram posts of each other, and predicting they would be 'the next IT couple'.
However, the supermodel, 55, made steps to clarify their relationship as she took to Instagram on Thursday to share a gushing birthday tribute to the Saudi Arabian film producer as he turned 40.
Alongside two snaps of the pair, including a photo of a bikini-clad Naomi embracing Mohammed, the beauty referred to her pal as her 'chosen family', before noting how much she cherishes their 'friendship and family-ship'.
She penned: 'Happy birthday 40th birthday and turn around the sun to my chosen family @moalturki My Mo.
'I'm so proud of all that you've done, all that you're doing, and all that's ahead for you. I'm beyond excited for your next chapter and everything your future holds. Most of all, I'm deeply grateful to have you in my life.
'I wish you joy, health, love, and every blessing this year and beyond. I know this next season is going to be filled with incredible things, and I can't wait for the world to see it all unfold.
'We love you so much, Uncle Mo. I truly cherish our friendship—and our family-ship.'
The pair have been friends for several years, after Mohammed first shared a snap with the superstar on his Instagram back in 2021.
They have been fixtures at each other's sides at many events since, including last year's BAFTA's, Cannes film festival, Paris Fashion Week in 2022 and 2023 and several exclusive parties, like Edward Enninful 's birthday bash.
Mohammed and Naomi have even jetted off on holiday together, with the pair soaking up the sun in Ibiza last year, while in April, they enjoyed a break to the Maldives alongside Naomi's children and pal Natasha Poly.
Naomi and Mohammed have been seen to be firm friends for several years and made their first public appearance together in in December 2021 at the Red Sea film festival, linking arms as they arrived together.
At a special birthday event held for Naomi in France in 2023, Mohammed was seen sat right by the birthday girl for the evening.
The Sun reported that the pair have become even closer around the time as Naomi had spent time with Mohammed in the Middle East, claiming they appear to have 'a spark'.
Alongside two snaps of the pair, the beauty referred to her pal as her 'chosen family', before noting how much she cherishes their 'friendship and family-ship'
A source told the publication: 'Naomi is very selective with who she spends time with and she has become close to Mohammed.
'They bonded over their love of fashion and art and have a lot of mutual friends. Naomi has been in Dubai with him and she seems to be the happiest she has ever been.
'They spend a lot of time together and there appears to be a spark between them, even if it is just a friendship at this point.'
The speculation was further fuelled after Naomi set tongues wagging over her relationship status as she sported a giant diamond on her ring finger for the third time.
She was seen sporting the sparkling new accessory at former British Vogue editor Edward's 52nd birthday at The Dorchester Hotel's restaurant China Tang in London last year.
However, months later, a friend of Naomi denied any romance, telling the Mail: 'It isn't a romance - all her friends know that he is actually in love with another model and in a settled relationship with them. Naomi is single and focuses on her children and her sobriety.'
The British star was previously engaged to U2 bassist Adam Clayton in 1993, and was then also engaged to Italian businessman Flavio Briatore before they split in 2002.
Naomi was last in a relationship with rapper Skepta in 2018 but enjoyed a fling with One Direction's Liam Payne the following year.
She has also enjoyed high-profile relationships with the likes of Diddy, Robert De Niro, Gerard Butler, Terrence Howard, Mike Tyson and Russian billionaire Vladislav Doronin over the years.
Although she is notoriously private about her love life, the star has previously stated she is 'on good terms' with her exes and is not known to be dating anyone at present.
In a rare interview about her love life in 2021, Naomi said: 'The sacrifice is really finding that soulmate who will understand you.
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The Guardian
40 minutes ago
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‘I must document everything': the film about the Palestinian photographer killed by missiles in Gaza
Israel has sought to pursue its campaign of annihilation against Gaza and its people behind closed doors. More than 170 Palestinian journalists have been killed so far, and no outside reporters or cameras are allowed in. The effects of this policy of concealment – which the Guardian managed to pierce this week with a shocking aerial photograph that made the front page – are to ensure that the outside world only catches sight of Gaza's horrors in small fragments, and to stifle empathy for those trapped inside by hiding them from view, obscuring their humanity. But a new documentary film, Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, seeks to open a window to the unfathomable suffering inside Gaza. It focuses on the life of a single young Palestinian woman named Fatma Hassouna, known as Fatem to those close to her. She is 24 years old when we meet her, and has such a broad smile and enthusiasm for life that she compels attention from her first appearance, a few minutes into the film. We see Hassouna's life through the screen of a mobile phone belonging to the director, Sepideh Farsi, and most of the film is made up of the conversations between these two women as they develop an increasingly strong personal bond over the course of a year. The director knows all about conflict and oppression. Farsi is Iranian-born and was a teenager at the time of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. When she was 16 she was imprisoned by the Islamic Republic regime, and she left the country for good two years later, settling in France. She was on tour with her film The Siren, a feature-length animation about the Iran-Iraq war, when the Gaza conflict erupted in October 2023. As the civilian death toll mounted, she found herself unable just to sit on the sidelines, watching endless debates that did nothing to stop the slaughter. 'The common denominator was that there was never the Palestinian voice there,' Farsi says. 'We had different points of views: the American, the European, the Egyptian, the Israeli, but never the Palestinian. It started really bothering me, and at some point I couldn't live with it any more.' In spring last year she flew to Cairo with the idea that she could somehow find a way across the Gaza border to film the war firsthand. That quickly proved a naive and futile mission, so she began filming Gazan refugees in Egypt. One of them suggested to Farsi that if she wanted to talk to someone inside, he could put her in touch with his friend Fatma in the al-Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City. We first see Hassouna the way Farsi meets her, on her little phone screen, materialising with green hijab, big glasses and her broad white strip of a smile. They clearly delight in each other's presence from the outset. 'From the first call, I felt that she was someone very special, and that something clicked between the two of us immediately,' Farsi says. 'As soon as we connected, I would be smiling or laughing, and she was the same on her side.' There had been no guarantee the two would get along. Farsi is significantly older, with a daughter Hassouna's age, and she is a cosmopolitan, sophisticated woman who has travelled the world, while Hassouna has been restricted to Gaza all her life. Hassouna is devout while Farsi is profoundly sceptical of any religious talk and challenges her new young friend over what kind of god would allow innocent people to suffer so painfully. However there is far more that draws them together, in ways that are harder to define. 'She had this energy, this shining thing. She was solar,' Farsi says. 'That's the adjective that fits her. Her natural smile. There was this mutual fascination, sorority, comradeship – a mixture of all of these things – and we were happy as soon as we connected.' Farsi makes her phone a portal through which Hassouna recounts her story and the tragedy of Gaza. She talks about her family and introduces her shy brothers to Farsi. She has already made herself a photographer and poet by the time they meet, and Farsi coaches her into being a film-maker and to send out video of the ruination around her. Hassouna is supremely, naturally talented. Her pictures capture the everyday effort of her neighbours trying to survive in the rubble, while her use of language – in her poems and in conversation – is every bit as evocative. The film's title is taken from her passing description of what it is like to venture outside: 'Every second you go out in the street, you put your soul on your hands and walk.' In another conversation, struggling to make sense of what is happening, Hassouna asks: 'We live a very simple life, and they want to take this simple life from us. Why? I'm 24 and I don't have any of the things that I want. Because every time you reach what you want, there's a wall. They put up a wall.' The film should not work. It is determinedly rudimentary, filmed largely on one phone pointed at another. The image of Hassouna sometimes freezes and buffers as the internet connection ebbs and flows. But these glitches draw us in and make us experience the precariousness of their connection. 'That's why I decided to keep this low resolution and not to use a regular camera,' Farsi explains. 'I wanted it to be very low-key technically, to match the connection problems with her, to match the disparity of life here and there.' She had originally attempted a cleanly edited version with all the disconnections cut out. 'It was lacking soul. It didn't breathe. So we put it back in – this brokenness of image and sound.' The sweetness of the relationship at the core of the film is made bittersweet by the constant threat of death around Hassouna. Every so often she reports the death of relatives, or neighbours whose eviscerated homes she points to out of her window. It feels like the encircling darkness is in a direct struggle with Hassouna's smile and her instinctive optimism. Anyone who does not want to know which triumphs in the end should stop reading here. Towards the end of the film, Farsi calls Hassouna to give her the happy news that the film has been selected to be screened at Cannes. They excitedly talk about Farsi obtaining a French visa that might allow Hassouna to get out of Gaza temporarily to attend the festival. While they are talking, the young Palestinian sends the film-maker a photo of her passport. That was 14 April this year. The next day, a Tuesday, Farsi could not get through to Gaza to give Hassouna an update on preparations. 'So I said, 'OK, we'll do it on Wednesday,' the director recalls. 'On Wednesday, I was working on the film on my computer with my phone beside me, and all of a sudden I saw a photo pop up. I opened the notification and saw her photo with a caption saying she had been killed. I didn't believe it. I started calling her frantically, and then called a mutual friend, the one who introduced us, and he confirmed it was true.' In the middle of the night, two missiles fired by an Israeli drone had pierced the roof of her building and burrowed through before detonating, one of them exploding in the family's second floor apartment, the other just below. Fatma Hassouna was killed along with her three brothers and two sisters. Her father died later of his wounds leaving her mother, Lubna, as the sole survivor. The investigative group Forensic Architecture studied the missile strike and declared it a targeted strike aimed at Hassouna for her work as a journalist and witness. Farsi has no doubt. 'She was targeted by the IDF,' she says. 'There were two missiles dropped by a drone on her house. It means they found out where she was living, planned a drone with missiles to go through three storeys of that building and explode on the second floor. It's amazingly well planned in order to eliminate somebody who just does photography. 'I still can't believe it,' Farsi says, speaking from Bogotá, where she is touring with the film, which is now Hassouna's legacy. 'It's three months now, a bit more, and it's still quite unbelievable. For me, she is somewhere out there and I believe I will meet her someday.' In their conversations, Hassouna talked about all the places in the world she dreamed of seeing, while insisting she would always return home to Gaza. Shortly before she died, she told Farsi: 'I have the idea that I must keep going and I must document everything, to be part of this story, to be me!' She imagined passing on her experiences to her children, but instead they have been captured for a cinematic audience, and Hassouna's arresting personality has been preserved at the same time, a portrait of a unique individual among the 60,000 dead. Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk is in UK and Irish cinemas from 22 August. Tickets at
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5 hours ago
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