00:00This is to you. I swear your face is going to win us the account. Cut.
00:16I was fascinated about filmmaking from a very early age. And you know, that's how it started.
00:25It started from taking my parents' camera and filming my toys, shooting with my friends.
00:31By the time I was 15, 16, still shooting stuff, I think my parents at that point realized
00:37that this is what he's going to do. But before graduating from high school, I wanted to start
00:47working. I wanted to start making my own money. Because most of my friends at the time were
00:5110 years older than me, and they were all working. So I thought to approach my mother.
00:57She had an events company with a trade license for interior design. I said, since you have
01:02this trade license, let me try and set up a division in your company that I can run
01:07for interior design, even though I had no qualifications whatsoever. And my first job
01:11actually was my sister's wedding stage. I designed her wedding stage. And I remember
01:16asking what she would have liked as a theme. She said a secret garden theme. So I designed
01:22this secret garden theme, and we had obviously the people there in Blooms to help build this
01:28wedding stage. And that's how it started, because it started from word of mouth. Because
01:31mashallah, I have quite a large family, and the people who attended the wedding saw the
01:36wedding stage, and then they asked who had done it. I said my brother, he started to
01:39get into this, and that's how it started. And for about a year and a half, that's all
01:44I was doing, was doing wedding stages, which was very lucrative. But again, obviously filmmaking
01:50was something that I definitely wanted to continue doing. And I had remembered that
01:56I said, you know what, I think it's time that I should apply for a film school to really
01:59understand how to make films. Because what I was doing was just making films from how
02:04I imagined you would make films. I knew it wasn't the right way. So I started to look
02:09into film schools, and I did my research online, asked people who had been to film
02:18schools, checked New York, LA, and then I found this one in London, called the London
02:24Film School. It was actually the most acclaimed film school from the research that I had done.
02:29Because it's exactly what I wanted to do. It was strictly filmmaking. There was very
02:35little theory. It was practical. And that's what I wanted. But the problem was that that
02:43school was a master's course. And I had graduated from high school, getting into business, and
02:50set up this division, which became quite successful, but not continued, not gone to college for
02:58a bachelor's. But what had happened was that they had a criteria. Either you have a film
03:06course, or you have a bachelor's, or you have the experience. So what I had done is, with
03:10the help of my mother, created this portfolio of all the work that I had done, which was
03:18actually really thick, for the year and a half that I was working. And we had submitted
03:23that with the other stuff that we needed to submit, like a short film, or a three-minute
03:27script, a storyboard that I had drawn, a critique on a film. And we had submitted that as a
03:34package. And we had submitted that whole design as part of filmmaking, which was production
03:41design, art direction, which is pretty much the same thing. Building sets and wedding
03:46stages, it's almost the same thing. And they had accepted me to do a master's on that.
03:53You know what? With all honesty, City of Life is now a couple of years old. I've done it,
03:58I've made it, I've experienced all of what I've had to experience. But City of Life was
04:04definitely not an easy film to make. At one point, actually, it got stopped, on many occasions,
04:09actually. But I don't know if I want to go into talking about that, because I've actually
04:14mentioned it quite a bit in the press. But I feel it's unnecessary to keep going back
04:19on what I had struggled to make City of Life, because now, alhamdulillah, we've reached
04:23a stage in the film industry where there is support. We have now a Dubai Film and TV Commission.
04:28There's no need for me to go back and talk about the struggle of trying to achieve a
04:33film industry here, when it's actually now being achieved. I'd rather be known as a filmmaker,
04:41not the person who just made City of Life. I want to continue making films for the rest
04:44of my life. But I'm very proud of that movie, because of what it managed to achieve, for
04:52myself, but also for the industry. I strongly believe that had this film not been made,
05:00where we are today in the film industry would be two years ahead of us, in front of us.
05:07We would not have reached that stage yet. I strongly believe that. Every movie that
05:11I do, its quality is going to get better. I mean, every day you're learning as a filmmaker.
05:17I mean, if your films are not improving with each film that you make, then there must be
05:21something going wrong. What goes through my mind is, okay, am I choosing the right film
05:26for my second feature? Is this the right one I want to do? And I said, you know what, I'm
05:30just going to do it anyway, because if I wait another year, it's going to be three years
05:33in City of Life. The project's in front of me. I think it's going to be fun. Try and
05:40get as many films as... I would like to be making a film a year, if I could.
