Ahmad Alayar

I'm an Arab, grew up in the US, and now live in Kuwait. Ever since I can remember, going to the cinema was my favourite thing in the world. Gathering my siblings to make really bad home movies became a weekend activity. My favourite films, though, were unmakable. They were the BIG ones. Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars... Meanwhile, I started getting into magic tricks. I'd practice tricks I've learned online over and over again in front of a mirror, unknowingly becoming an expert in audience perception and misdirection. That was around the same time I saw SAW. That plot twist blew my younger selfs mind. EUREKA! A movie IS a magic trick! I started hunting down films with the greatest plot twists just to scratch that itch. Memento, The Sixth Sense, The Usual Suspects, Psycho, The Prestige... I became obsessed, but even after watching all of those, nothing felt as magical as those BIG ones. Pirates of the Caribbean, Jurrasic Park, Avatar... I started hearing about a movie called Lawrence of Arabia... Apparently the most epic movie of all time! And it involves Arabs! I had to see it. Teenage me dreampt of that movie, but couldn't find it. There was a part of me that also didn't want to see it. A sense of finality put me off. I've seen all the other big ones. It was, as per my awareness at the time, the only one left. I started imagining that movie. What would the most epic movie of all time be about? What would it look like? Sound like? How can it be more epic than Lord of the Rings? I imagined its world and characters. Imagined its politics and scheming tribal leaders. Imagined its wondrous locations. How can it ever live up to my naive expectations? Suddenly, this obsession had to be repressed. It was time to apply for colleges. With my cultural background, my family didn't see a future in filmmaking. So, I diverted to engineering. Accepted to Texas A&M as an Industrial Engineer, my obsession realligned itself. I grew to realize I had a deep love for Math and Physics. This hidden passion was supressed by my religous upbringing. I became deeply fascinated with the mysteries of our universe. I started thinking the universe itself had to be the ultimate magic trick. And I intensely wanted to learn how its trick is done. I still find myself lost in daydream, contemplating the nature of reality, consciousness, and our place as humans in an endless unknowability. But... the most epic movie of all time loomed. That was when I finally watched it. Lawrence of Arabia. And it was great! Though, nowhere close to what I imagined. Today, I work an office job. While sitting in my desk, churning out mundane tasks, I keep dreaming... Wrote an essay that got me into the Three Days in Cannes program. Attended TIFF and NYFF. Wrote a bunch of shorts that went nowhere. One of which earned a meaningless top 10% ranking in Coverfly under the genre "Other." With this amateur background, you may be thinking, why me? Well...