Some countries are more challenging than others to talk about in a public forum.

Saudi Arabia even more so.

Oh the controversy.

on one side of the coin, by simply visiting Saudi, I am seen by some to be passing judgment on a culture I don't belong in.

A heathen American liberal there to impose my beliefs on others.

I don't see myself that way.

On the flip side of the coin, I am not liberal enough.

I must not care about human rights.

By traveling there, I'm giving money to a place that tortures and kills journalists, that limits rights of women, that limits freedoms to its citizens.

But I don't see myself that way either.

What I see is an opportunity to try to explore a place that, in reality, I know very little about.

A chance to meet filmmakers from another country, to try to see how they perceive themselves as creative individuals within Saudi society, to determine where their voice and inspiration stems from.

What I found in my travels to Saudi Arabia is that it is an incredibly large, diverse country with multiple points of view, with people hungry for change and others equally desiring no change at all, and that the diversity of opinion and experiences within Saudi Arabia is not unlike the conservative to liberal spectrum found within the United States as well.

When I see an open door, I walk through it.

I hope you come with me.

I'm Stephanie.

The Cinema Nomad.

Join me on brand new adventures.

The world is a wonderful place where people overcome incredible odds to make their mark.

We'll meet filmmakers who are as courageous as they are inspiring.

Cinema Nomad connects across cultures to learn, explore, share and carry on a heritage of cinematic storytelling.

[ in Arabic ] Fahmi Farahat, a bold and brave filmmaker with a knack for storytelling lives in Al Khobar where he works as a production director or in-house filmmaker for Saudi Aramco, the Arabian American oil company.

I started off my career wanting to tell people about Saudi or specific things to change perspective, and then halfway through it, I realized, like, I just want to tell stories.

I just want to connect to humans, and I want humans to connect with me.

Like you said, the need to understand.

When I think of Fahmi, I always picture him wearing his favorite shorts and a graphic t-shirt.

This image is stamped into my mind because until just after our visit, it was forbidden for Saudi men to wear shorts in public.

Fahmi's choice of dress is one of the many ways I see him as a subtly rebellious man in his strict society.

Fahmi is easygoing and surprisingly frank, not afraid to talk openly about the things around him.

Sex, dating, even religion.

Well, I don't represent Saudi Arabia because that's what they taught me to say.

You know, if you are not conformed into a certain way then you do not represent Saudi Arabia, you are an outsider.

And then years later we realized that 50% of us are outsiders.

The majority of us I don't think we are conservative, Arabs in general, we're not conservative.

We like drinking, we like sex, and we like, I don't know, lying.

We like selling and making money.

We're like all these earthly things.

You know, we'd be lying to ourselves if we're saying we're not that.

There was a time when the government or the country was running towards unifying everybody.

We all speak and look and talk the same.

And that was the 80s and the 90s up until the 2000s, And then suddenly, we're like, no, no, no, no.

We are a diverse people, diverse cultures and diverse backgrounds, and we are all Saudis.

Let's celebrate that.

Fahmi was born and raised in Riyadh to a Saudi father who was born in Mecca and a German mother, giving him a rare dual citizenship.

At 18, Fahmi moved to the United States and soon became a film student, graduating from the University of California, Fullerton.

I had no idea that there's even the possibility of studying something like that.

Like it never even occurred to me in my mind, ever.

He lived in the United States for eight years, making films as well as friends, before deciding to return home to Saudi Arabia to pursue his life as a filmmaker in a burgeoning industry.

I spent a week with Fahmi at his home in Al Khobar, near Dammam on the eastern side of the country, at a time when Saudi was said to be going through rapid changes.

I wondered how Fahmi and other Saudis were reacting to these so-called changes and how it might affect or influence them as filmmakers.

I don't make the film for that, but I always aspire or hope that my film would cause a ripple effect, or would cause some kind of social change or justice or or even if a couple individuals.

I mean, sometimes one of the best things ever, when after a screening, one or two people just come up to you and say, I felt it, or this is my story, or this happened to me.

Cinema exposes people to other cultures, other ideas, and that's generally just make society a better society.

I never imagined in my wildest dreams that I would ever travel to Saudi Arabia.

But in October 2019 while I was Qatar on a stopover the Saudi government announced the opening up of visas for for general tourists for the first time in modern history.

They just opened up their tourist visa system for non-Muslim tourists like three weeks ago.

We got our visas on the very first day they opened it up.

They have created new rules for tourists where you do not have to be fully covered, but, you know, still be dressed conservatively, be, you know, cover your bare skin.

And I want to respect the culture as much as possible So, I got myself some pretty new scarves to try out while I'm there.

And yeah, yeah, your guess is as good as mine.

We'll see how it goes, I can't say that I was particularly excited to visit Saudi Arabia, but certainly I was intrigued, especially after watching “Wadjda” the critically acclaimed film made in Saudi Arabia, directed by a Saudi women filmmaker, Haifaa al-Mansour.

[ in Arabic ] The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as it is officially called, has over 35 million people, the majority of whom are under age 30, and it is one of the richest countries in the world.

Saudi Arabia is considered the birthplace of Islam, and is one of the last remaining strongholds of rule by absolute monarchy, where religion and state are joined at the hip.

The capital is Riyadh, while the home to the most sacred Islamic sites are Mecca and Medina, with over 2.5 million people traveling here each year to perform their once in a lifetime Hajj pilgrimage.

Non-Muslims are not allowed to visit these cities.

What began as a collection of kingdoms and empires formed by Bedouin tribes reliant on frankincense, transformed into a spiritual center after the Prophet Muhammad founded Islam there.

After years of tug of war between various factional tribes for the claim over Mecca and Medina, The Wahhabi Saud family joined forces to protect the purity of Islam and regain Mecca and Medina from an Ottoman Turk occupation.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was officially born in 1932, and a year later, in 1933, the first oil concession was signed by Saudi Arabia.

Saudis vast oil reserves have allowed for quite friendly relations with the United States and Great Britain, as in 1943, U.S.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced to the world that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was of vital importance to the defense of the United States of America.

Saudi's public relations image is consumed by the maneuverings of the infamous Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS, as he has been deemed, who was supposedly leading Saudi Arabia into the 21st century as a “progressive reformer.” And now it is nearly impossible to think of Saudi Arabia without acknowledging the 2019 murder of Saudi born Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi for his criticism of the Saudi regime.

Of course, once you're in Saudi Arabia, you do not hear anything about Khashoggi or criticism of the regime.

Instead, it's all about Saudi Vision 2030.

MBS' plan to take Saudi Arabia into the future by building up infrastructure, introducing tourism to boost the economy in a soon to be post-oil world, and reintroducing entertainment and the arts back into Saudi society.

Things that had long been considered haram or anti-Islamic are suddenly deemed okay again.

Until the 1980s, movie theaters were not particularly controversial nor seen as an un-Islamic by the majority of Arabs.

Egyptian, Indian and Turkish films were especially popular.

The closing of the cinemas in the early 1980s had been part of a larger reaction to the Islamic Revival Movement.

In November and December 1979, Islamic extremist insurgents who wanted to overthrow the House of Saud to instill a stricter Islamic moral code seized the Holy Mosque in Mecca.

A two week battle ensued between the insurgents and the Saudi forces, and hundreds of militants, security forces and hostages were killed in the cross fire.

In the following years, the Royal Family chose to ease tensions with the religious factions by instilling stricter moral codes which deemed popular cultural activities such as cinema going and music to be haram or against Islam.

Forbidden.

I remember people getting arrested for playing music in public, dancing in public.

I witnessed that and it was something that was frustrating growing up throughout the years.

But that's also a process that the people need to get used to it.

It was not until 2018, over 35 years later, that the cinemas of Saudi Arabia finally reopened.

The first movie to be screened publicly in cinemas was the American blockbuster “Black Panther.” What happens now?

determines what happens to the rest of the world.

If the cinemas of Saudi Arabia have been closed for more than 35 years.

Who is making films in the Kingdom, and how have they managed to become filmmakers in a country where filmmaking has long been considered haram?

When I arrived in Saudi Arabia, tourism was so new that Saudi did not have the usual tourist infrastructure of more popular destinations, It was a surreal experience while the Kingdom was preparing for tourism, tourists were not coming in droves.

As a result, it felt like we had arrived to Disney World weeks before the parks opened.

The slogan you see everywhere.

they're trying to build up.

There's, like, some groovy sculptures around the waterfront you can see here.

But otherwise it's very, very quiet.

I, we're not really seeing other tourists around.

It's interesting.

I've never been to such a quiet city before, many, many people stopped me on the street and genuinely welcomed me to their country.

There was both an excitement and a sense of pride, along with a curiosity.

I sensed that a lot was riding on this potential of tourism.

I realized that not everyone wants change.

And change might mean something different to me than it does to your average Saudi, than it does to others on the fringes of society.

I recognize that for some people in Saudi, this type of change is not welcomed nor deemed a good thing.

It is possibly seen as just pandering to Western ideals in lieu of traditional values, but the majority of people I encountered seem to embrace this type of change, and the mere fact that they stumbled upon a tourist like myself gave some sort of hope that their lives might change for the better in years to come.

What a delight it was to be in Saudi Arabia, just after the cinemas had reopened, This may be one of the few countries in the world where movie theater attendance is going up.

With cinemas now open, Saudi filmmakers can finally have a venue to screen their work, and movie loving locals no longer have to drive the Bahrain or fly to Dubai for the weekend just to see a movie on the silver screen.

The film industry is an area that the government feels can be a gold mine for the country.

As such, the Royal Family has put some efforts in motion to build a Hollywood style studio system and foster a generation of creative individuals and film technicians to study and workshop filmmaking in order to create content by Saudis for Saudis.

The government will pay for promising young filmmakers to study filmmaking at prestigious universities abroad, and they have launched the Red Sea Film Fest with initiatives such as the Red Sea Film Lab, which grants Saudis and other Arab filmmakers money and residencies to workshop their scripts and be mentored towards producing feature length films.

We visited the newly opened movie theaters operated by Vox Cinemas, and it was truly an extravagant experience.

Here in a shopping mall in Jeddah, which easily could be mistook for a mall in suburban America, is the Gold Cinema, which takes movie watching to a VIP level.

Upon arrival, you are seated by a hostess in a lounge where you can order food and virgin cocktails.

We watched “Born a King,” a Spanish Saudi UK co-production, an epic period piece about the young life and rise of the Arabian King Faisal.

Seeing “Born A King” sparked a conversation with Fahmi about what constitutes a Saudi film.

I think it's just too soon to know what a Saudi film looks like.

There are many, many film industries throughout the whole wide world, but only a handful of them have a distinct unique theme that you can the minute.

If you're watching it.

While it's mute, you can tell This is an American film.

This is a Bollywood film.

This is a European film.

Very little is written about the history of cinema in Saudi, but what we do know is that Aramco produced a few films.

One of the first is said to be “The Fly,” an informational documentary to educate citizens about the spread of disease.

Sounds stimulating.

The 2012 film, written and directed by Haifaa al-Mansour, “Wadjda” was touted around the world as the first feature film from Saudi Arabia and significantly, directed by a woman.

After workshopping her screenplay through a Sundance screenwriting lab, Haifaa al-Mansour shot “Wadjda” in Saudi Arabia with a German co-production.

So her crew in Riyadh was a mix of German and Saudi filmmakers.

Due to the guardianship laws at the time, Haifa had to remain in a van during the filming of the exterior scenes so as not to be seen mingling with the mostly male crew.

She had to direct remotely via monitors and walkie talkies.

“Wadjda” is a beautiful story centered around the title character, a ten-year-old girl, rambunctious and ambitious.

Two things Saudi girls are not supposed to be.

Wadjda's goal in life is simple.

She wants to buy a bicycle so that she can race her friend, a boy named Abdullah.

Even though girls were not supposed to ride bikes.

Wadjda has an entrepreneurial spirit and comes up with scheme after scheme to raise the money herself, despite many obstacles, and ultimately does so by winning a Quran recitation contest, only to learn that she is expected to donate the money back to a cause that supports Islam.

In the 2000s, you start to see some bold independent filmmakers spring up.

In lieu of films being made to screen in cinemas, young filmmakers of the 2000s turned to making content for YouTube and organized private home screenings amongst friends, while also passing around DVDs of their films.

There was a time when short films were not just a what do you call a calling card or or a proof of concept for something.

It was by itself the industry or the art form by itself.

It would get a lot of support from the government, from other entities, because you're a Saudi doing a short film, telling Saudi stories, but then you also got a lot of backfire from religious people.

And if this religious person holds a position in the government... It's this constant struggle between the liberals and the conservatives.

What fascinates me most about many of these early independent films is that the plots of these early works often deal directly with the ban on cinemas.

In 2007, for instance, “Cinema 500km,” a documentary short directed by Abdullah Al-Eyaf, was made in response to the fact that Abdullah had never been to the movies, so he filmed a 500 kilometer road trip across the length of the country to Bahrain to go see a movie in the cinemas.

As neighboring Gulf countries had no such ban, the 2006 film “What's Up” is considered to be the first Saudi feature film made by Saudis for Saudis, though it was written by an Egyptian and shot in Dubai.

The project was funded and produced by Saudi billionaire Prince Waleed bin Talal and stars several Saudi actors in a distinctly Saudi storyline.

This film also loosely deals with the subject of filmmaking being haram in an extremely satirical way.

Even the 2016 film “Barakah Meets Barakah” directed by Mahmoud Sabbagh.

plays with the concept of cinema and the arts being forbidden in Saudi society.

“Barakah Meets Barakah” is a romantic comedy where a young Saudi man courts a wealthy Instagram celebrity trying to navigate her own professional life and personal freedoms, along with the restrictions that her own family and society places on her.

The protagonist, Barakah, works in middle management at a ministry whose job it is to report on suspicious, immoral activity.

While his true passion is for theater acting.

He acts in local plays, usually playing the role of the leading lady, as women cannot appear on stage with men.

Twice in this film there are a nice break the fourth wall moments, where the film shows a montage of historical events illustrating the difference of then versus now.

Barakah narrates commentary over the social change throughout the generations, and he even comments on the cinema shutting down.

He emphasizes the before and after this 1979 seige, and the repercussions that his generation born after most of these events occurred, is still reaping.

What draws me most to Fahmi's films is that he is not afraid to show you life beyond the veil.

In 2018, Fahmi released a 30 minute film, “Rules Of The Game.” The title, perhaps in homage to the 1939 French satire directed by Jean Renoir, set on the eve of a wedding between a bride and groom who are just getting to know one another, “Rules Of The Game” shows a glimpse of Saudi life unveiled behind closed doors, revealing an intimacy and a natural human vulnerability, something I imagine one does not see very often on screen in Saudi Arabia.

Fahmi even explores themes of homosexuality in this film, a concept that is strictly forbidden in the Kingdom.

I asked him about the risks he took and the general reaction from Saudi audiences.

like those who saw the trailer or heard about the film, a lot of those people, got negative reaction towards the right away, but then once you see the film, it gave a different expression, different reaction.

We had a screening in Qatif a city called Qatif It was a major conservative audience where people were a little bit upset.

Why are you showing me the private life of couples in the bedroom where other conservative people, they saw that I'm exposing certain things, you know.

[ in Arabic ] Okay.

It's a icebreaker, you know.

Okay.

Okay.

Fahmi's time living and studying in America had a strong impact on his filmmaking endeavors.

He shared stories with me about life in America as a young Saudi man studying in California.

Directly after the 9-11 terrorist attacks occurred.

He realized that Americans suddenly had a curiosity about Saudi Arabia that was never there before, and he decided to utilize this opportunity to start making films about the Saudi experience.

and thus “Saudis In America” was born.

His 2007 feature length documentary.

that was the pure age of of, you know, Saudis, we are just like everyone else.

I was just a way to express ourselves and tell the world of Americans this is how we see things.

And then Americans got to see different point of views, guys, girls and stuff and some views they like, Some they didn't.

What are the five words, or five things that you would affiliate Saudi Arabia with?

- Turban.

Turban.

I would honestly say terrorists.

Yeah.

Terrorist Muslims, muslins like the green clothing, elephants.

But I did get over it.

I realized that I don't know anything about Mongolians.

I don't know anything about Hong Kongese.

I don't know anything about Taiwanese.

I don't know anything about, barely anything about Argentina.

I've seen some Argentina films.

So why am I upset that someone doesn't know anything about Saudi So it got to a point to me, I was like, you know what?

Sure.

Whatever.

Whatever.

You have perceptions, it's not your fault and it's not my fault.

And I have perceptions of different countries as well that are right or wrong.

And it's just our job as, as, as, as humans to connect with each other, to learn each other.

One of the greatest pleasures of my trip to Saudi Arabia was visiting the Saudi Filmmaking Workshop in Dammam.

This energetic group of filmmakers, men and women combined gave me insight into what it means to be a Saudi filmmaker in the 21st century, a topic that causes animated debates and stirs creativity amongst this promising new generation of filmmakers.

Very rarely do I notice myself in culture shock these days.

The there is one aspect of Saudi Arabia that still gave me culture shock, even though intellectually I was already aware of it.

The gender segregation.

Previously, the guardianship laws of Saudi Arabia made sure that a woman was not permitted to attend certain events or travel without the permission of her male guardian either a husband, father, brother, son or uncle.

Now these laws are gradually being relaxed and even the, shall we say, separate but equal segregation of restaurants and cafes are starting to disappear.

Women can now travel without a guardian, and it is not required by law to be fully covered, though change often takes longer to take root in a society as a whole rather than the laws written on paper.

We've seen so many Starbucks since we've arrived a week ago.

And yesterday we stopped in one on our on our walk around Khobar.

And it was funny because I just started to walk into the entrance and people inside are waving.

No, no, no.

And then the one employee comes out and you going like this, which I indicate to mean there's a separate entrance.

So I needed to use the family entrance because I am a woman.

And the entrance I had walked into was the single entrance.

Now it doesn't mean single as in alone, it means single as in men only, men and boys.

And so that side is reserved strictly for men and men alone.

And the other side is for women.

Women with children or women with male guardians.

And so Tiz, I guess, is my male guardian here.

He came with me to the family side.

“The Perfect Candidate” from 2019 is a window into the life of everyday women in Saudi Arabia.

Through this film, we see both the normalcy of their lives and the traditional values.

We see the women at home wearing Western clothes, sisters with friendly rivalries just like me and mine, daughters wishing to rebel against their parents and emulate their good sides.

Our protagonist is Miriam, a woman in her 20s who works as a doctor at a clinic.

The movie deals with complications of guardianship laws that both men and women face.

Our doctor wants to travel to Dubai to attend a medical conference and hopes to apply for a position, a better hospital.

But she can only do so with the permission of her guardian.

In this instance, her father.

Her father grants his daughter permission to travel.

However, he does so by paper and the system has since changed and it needs to be done electronically.

She misses the opportunity to take her flight to the conference, because she cannot get the new electronic permission in time.

“The Perfect Candidate” subtly shows us differences between the mentality of the older versus the younger generations.

These dichotomies are the very same that I noticed while visiting Saudi Arabia and speaking with a younger generation of filmmakers.

Fahmi was more open and outspoken than his father's generation, and the filmmakers of the Dammam Writing Workshop were far more outspoken and open than I would have ever expected.

What is refreshing to see is that through their group discussions, they are working through some of the many challenges of being a filmmaker in Saudi, and mainly trying to work out what it means to be a Saudi filmmaker.

at the Gulf Terrace Hotel with a stunning nighttime view of the Dammam skyline.

I sat down with Rayna Jaber, a young, up and coming commercial film director with a strong Instagram presence at just 23 years old.

Ranya was full of life and confidence, taking the Saudi film world by storm, often directing on sets where she is the sole woman in a crew of up to 50 men.

Rania had a lot to say about life, love and filmmaking coming from the perspective of an ethnically Jordanian woman born and raised in Saudi Arabia.

[ in Arabic ] What I love about Fahmi is his ability to innovate and his desire to push the boundaries of genre and themes.

Fahmi is looking to the future, not afraid of change.

When we met Fahmi in 2019, he was in pre-production of his feature narrative film “Yajuj.” We even went location scouting with him.

He described his film as the first zombie feature to be made in Saudi, and he was already building this into a franchise.

With not one feature film, but plans to make three.

When Fahmi was getting ready to shoot the first film in the series.

Covid struck the globe and Saudi Arabia shut down, going into one of the strictest lockdowns in the entire world.

This did not stop Fahmi, however, and he made his film, but in a very different approach.

He streamed the film live on Instagram as he was filming it, across 33 different Instagram accounts, one for each character in the film.

In 2016, I remember one of the early concepts while I was still writing the feature and thinking that this is going to be my first big feature, I already had this whole interactive ideas that I was dabbling with.

And I remember even with my cousin and my other friend, he's a theatre director, I was already discussing things of what can I do different?

And Snapchat was new, that was the thing at that time.

And I remember I still now have seen it in my head when me and him, me and my cousin acted out scenes in my little small tiny apartment because we were thinking of, I was telling, can I make a film on Snapchat?

The actors each filmed the narrative on their own cell phones from their characters perspective, while the film was being shot in real time by a professional crew.

And this found footage zombie apocalypse thriller streamed live to Saudis following along on social media.

[ screaming ] Oh my god.

[ screaming ] OPEN THE DOOR.

OPEN THE DOOR.

[ screaming ] OPEN THE DOOR.

How was it received?

We had about 3000 viewers, 3000 people following us, and we lost a lot of viewers because we got late.

We were supposed to, the show was supposed to start, I think, at four and then became five, and then we said six, and then at 8:00 at night, we ended up shooting.

So we lost a few people on the way.

We lost a few people in between.

They're like, I don't get it.

Is this real?

Is that not real?

Is this theatre or is this film?

And the graphics suck, you know, but then, the solid couple thousand who were there from the beginning to end, I appreciate every one single of them.

They attracted, they loved it.

They felt that we're part of something different, that we're connected.

We're doing something.

Yeah.

There was a nice perception of disbelief that, we just enjoyed it.

A couple people came over and “tried to help” one of the characters.

They came, they found her somehow Stephanie-- And they ended up in the film?

No.

No.

The helpers?

I wish.

We were hoping.

We wanted them to be.

And then they just barely get close, and they bumped up to us instead of the actor and then, well, like.

No, but you can go, fine if you want, but keep it real, you know, and they're like, oh cool.

and they left.

In 2026, when I decided that Fahmi's episode would be in Cinema Nomad Season Two, I realized that so much has changed in Saudi Arabia and likely in Fahmi's life too.

I learned that Fahmi had moved to Germany and was sorta in a self-exile.

I was curious to know more.

Why he moved.

What he was up to in his life and work, and how much he perceived had changed in the Kingdom.

After running a half marathon in Copenhagen, Denmark.

I took a train to Bad Harzburg, Fahmi's adoptive hometown in Germany, perhaps the polar opposite of life in Al Khobar.

[ in German ] What's happened in the interim six years since we last saw you in Saudi Arabia?

Nice.

Since 2019.

Where has life... Wow.

So much time has passed.

It's amazing.

It's amazing.

I'm happy I love it.

I got married to a filmmaker, a producer filmmaker.

We started a company called Dramaturgies.

We developed concepts and executed the planning, development, planning.

It's kind of how I called it I started developing pitching finance.

I got a bunch of films, short films especially Got a couple of shorts funded.

Got a couple other feature projects developed.

Won a couple of awards here and there at some festivals.

The Saudi festival and the Red Sea.

Local.

The local festivals.

Got screwed over a couple of times.

Got hashtagged a couple of times Lost my job, two jobs in a row in the corporate world and moved to Germany.

Okay.

All right, well, that's a lot to dig into.

It may seem odd that Fahmi ended up in this small German town, but he has roots here.

His German mother was born in Barsinghausen, a small historical village in the Harz region.

And as a youngster Fahmi would visit Bad Harzburg on summer vacations.

As I visited Fahmi in early 2026, he was in a transition period.

At this point, Fahmi had lived in Bad Harzburg for about eight months.

His 12 year old daughter Salma was living with him in Germany, going to school and adjusting to her new life.

She's a sweet, bright girl and the light of Fahmi's life.

He even volunteers as a school crossing guard.

However, his wife Jomana, whom he was expecting their first child together with, was still in Saudi Arabia.

It was difficult for me to visit her there and he was missing his family back home.

So, talk to me about your choice to move here to Bad Harzberg.

Germany.

It seems like a big cultural shift.

Can you tell me what was behind the choice to move to Germany and how it's going?

What was the choice?

Well, moving, I left my job at Aramco, and I went to work for a major football club to do their social media content.

I was the Head of Media Production.

It was a fun job.

Started out very nice, but then 12 days later they let me go.

During the probation period.

Well, I mean, it's okay if you don't want to talk about it, but do you have any idea why they let you go so quickly?

Because you were doing good work for them?

It seems like.

So the club has a strict policy of, of of no one speaks for the club or her presence, the club, except for the coach, the players and this official spokesman, the special spokesman was my immediate boss because we are all under the PR team.

And when another name family's name started coming out, a whole family, Farahat, he's a filmmaker.

And then some of them are like, why is a cinema filmmaker coming and doing a social media video?

This is stupid?

While others saying You guys should be grateful that the club brought a filmmaker like him to do this and so on, already by that.

They already had that problem, and I already had got called from the corporate, from the corporate level and stuff.

Why?

Why is your name out there?

Did you write anything?

Did you claim... say that you publicize to anyone that you work in this position?

Kinda did, I didn't know, I'm not supposed to, but I did say that I updated my social media profile, Yeah, yeah, yeah, to Head of Media Productions and then some reporter found out So he announced it.

There's a whole article about who the guy is, family Farahat and a little bio thing about me, and also caused more struggle and caused more.

And then people started looking at my views and on my films.

And what is this?

This Saudi is American?

and his wife goes out with him?

without covering her hair?

and this and that.

And it even caused a bigger problem now, more with and against.

Some people even text me to threaten me.

Some people text me to tell me, We are with you.

Please don't care about what these people say.

Keep doing it.

And management, they didn't want to deal with it.

I was so shocked.

Upset.

Questioning my entire life, decisions, everything.

How I got to this point, my corporate, my decision to go into the corporate world 13 years ago, my decision to leave California in 2010, my decision to leave everything.

Everything.

I got to a point where everything was shattered.

Everything was like, I don't know anymore what I want, why I want, why am I even making films?

Why am I even a freaking filmmaker?

Why is it all this happening?

I don't want any of that stuff.

And, instead of going back to Saudi, I took a train and came to Bad Harzburg from Austria to here.

And I've been here since.

I haven't been back to Saudi since.

I could sense that the decision to leave Saudi being temporarily split from his family and having to make a new life in Germany was the source of some heartbreak for Fahmi.

Life experience and age sometimes hardens us, and Fahmi didn't quite have that same spark as a young man I met in Saudi, who defiantly wore shorts and pushed social boundaries with a smile.

Despite these challenges of adjusting to a new life in a new country, though, Fahmi pushes forward and I admire him for this.

His entrepreneurial spirit is strong and he is forging a new path for himself, putting himself out there to the community, building up a clientele for video productions.

He was creating social media content for a local barber shop, and planning filmmaking workshops and acting retreats to host in Bad Harzburg.

He's building up a business with goals of educating youths and training the next generation of storytellers.

So, you said in the last few years you kind of had a tiff with cinema that you broke up.

What caused that disappointment in cinema and you?

I mean, I think when one hand is the aspirations and then the reality check once you become 44.

It was different when you're 33 and then when you're 44 or 42, 43 now, 42 I guess, Ummm and a lot of it had to do with the industry.

When I left LA coming back to Saudi Arabia in 2010, and I wanted to come back to Saudi because I felt back then that the industry is going to push.

Something's happening and I don't want to miss it out while I'm in LA, which is not true.

I theory, I was right, but it was.

I didn't know I had another 5 to 10 years before that time.

We thought back then what happened in 2019 and 20, many of us thought in 2010 and 11 it was going to happen, but we felt that we had this idea, but then it didn't.

And then, the corporates, my, my job at Aramco and the cultural center, my corporate job also in the last 3 or 4 years became a lot more social media involved.

That's just the direction.

I mean, when I first was hired we were doing documentaries or doing longer format short movie style commercials.

Advertisement.

Things a bit different.

But then the more the reels and the Instagrams and the TikTok and all the stuff started being more important for the marketing and online presence our jobs started shifting towards that more and more, and that also changed the way I consume content, the way I see, the way I create content I'll be your ball catcher.

Yes.

Got my exercise in for the day.

There you go.

Oh, I'll get it.

Get it.

That would be a would have been a point for me.

Yeah.

[ in Arabic ] In the interim years since I first met Fahmi, he kept making films, and one of my favorites is his short docu-mockumentary crossover from 2022, “Guys Who Knew Too Little About Andorra” which follows two Saudi guys, Nawaf and Sultan, who play heightened versions of themselves as they navigate the cultural norms of a country they know nothing about.

Fahmi filmed this while working on a travel reality TV series.

I love how it captures the concept of culture shock in a real life setting, while playing off of the humor and vulnerabilities foreigners sometimes face when traveling through a new land.

It's funny, but it's poignant.

I just really love the film.

Can you tell me, how did that come about?

Thank You.

What was it?

Why did you make it all that kind of good stuff?

Thank you.

I like the film, too.

And you, one of the few people who watch it has a positive review of the film.

Really?

Even the people who are in the film and people part of the film they don't understand?

And it's like, what is this film?

Kinda bad?

I don't like it.

The bad quality.

Stupid.

I don't understand it.

Oh no, I love it.

Is it a documentary?

or is it a narrative?

I don't get it.

You know that dumb these two, or are they faking it?

I don't get it.

Like, I got so many, very few people who are like, oh my God, I like that.

And I am very happy when I hear that because I do sometimes doubt myself or my dumb, What am I seeing?

I have a bad eye or what?

The film, we shot it.

I was hired as a producer on a traveling show called “Euroba Khatt” in Arabic which translates to “Road Trip Europe, Part Two” The whole premise of Europe road trip Europe is a two Saudi guys travel through Europe looking for other Saudis to find out what they're doing and why.

And the season one was very successful.

They went all throughout Eastern Europe and stuff, and the network loved it.

And they like, do a season two.

And that's when they got me on board to help with the workflow, because they were, their post their this and that and everything like, you know.

Yeah.

It was a mess.

On the way from Spain to France, we discovered this little country called Andorra In the middle of mountains, that summit belongs to this, that summit belongs to that.

And we thought it was interesting.

And of course, there's no single Saudi student or single Saudi medical professional anywhere that lives there.

There's barely any people there.

But we felt it is worth it is something this town is interesting.

It's worth checking out.

The producer was like, I, I don't know why I want to do something, but I don't know what it is.

But let's try to do something.

[ in Arabic ] ♪ That was shot in 2018, I think and it wasn't until 2020, ‘21, '22 I can't remember when I actually took the footage, went through it, kept editing, kept redesigning.

and changing until I came up with this cut that you have, I'm like, and then I just released it on YouTube It's hard to know if and how true change takes root.

When I visited Saudi in 2019, there was a push and pull between a desire for social change, change on paper versus change in society and the speed of that change.

While I can't say for certain how much has truly changed from what Fahmi tells me, things have changed a lot, and he mostly views this as positive change.

When dining out, there's no longer required gender segregation.

I remember the Starbucks in Al Khobar that had a wall dividing the single or men only versus family, women and children allowed sections.

This divider is no longer there.

Women are no longer required to have a male guardian to escort them out in public.

Many, many women are working, riding bicycles, driving.

It's no longer required to be fully covered at all times.

All of this was still relatively new when I visited Saudi, and society was still adapting to these rapid changes.

According to Fahmi, there's not a lot of overt censorship towards filmmakers.

Certainly, attacks towards the Royal Family or government would not be tolerated.

But in general, Fahmi felt more or less free to make his films.

However, society itself still censors.

There are certain themes, such as celebrating those who identify with an LGBTQ community that still warrants a backlash.

Sometimes a career ending backlash.

Freedom of speech or the censorship went down in a very amazing way.

I remember 2010 when I had a film, the, mockumentary where about the segregated men and women's office, and then the guy, the owner, decided to put them all in one place and film it and see what happened.

And the whole comedy happened.

I couldn't even register the script because it dealt with “segregation” Men were there highlighting words.

“Why is he saying...?” This is “Why is he saying, hey, look, the women come in and be so much awesome”.

No.

“Why are you saying this?” And you can't approve.

No approval.

No scriptable.

You're not allowed to shoot and so on.

That was just a few years ago.

Now it was the opposite, completely opposite.

We're talking about racism and we're talking about sexual harassment.

We're talking about the sexual workforce.

We're talking about all the a lot of things a lot of things.

We're open, you know, And the regulations are a lot more clear now.

The movie industry has picked up in the Kingdom as well.

Money has been poured into filmmaking, and more and more Saudi made films are making their way to the cinemas.

Going to the movies is still a popular activity, as it's still a relatively new phenomenon.

Some local box office hits from the past few years include “Sattar: The Return of the Legendary Slap” a comedy set in Riyadh's underground freestyle wrestling scene.

This lighthearted film is loosely about a man who never gives up on his dreams.

At the time of its release, this was considered the highest grossing domestic film in Saudi cinema history, which even made its way to Netflix.

Other Saudi films to stream on Netflix include “Alhamour H.A.” “Head to Head,” and “Alkhallat+” which has also evolved into a series.

The 2025 movie “Alzarfa: Escape from Hanhounia Hell” was another box office hit.

Another comedy centered around three friends who end up in prison after a botched up robbery attempt.

They escaped prison, only to end up appearing in a film funded by a wealthy Saudi business family.

The same family they tried to rob.

The film's director, Abdullah Majed, initially gained recognition for his film “Safraa's Night,” a short historical drama about the Battle of Wadi Al-Safra.

Also popular with Saudi audiences is “Shabab Al-Bomb” which started as a comedy TV series whose first episode was released in 2012.

It's turned into a franchise with a couple of feature films released as well.

“Shabab Al-Bomb” thematically deals with issues relating to Saudi youths, including family relationships, social media, sports, addiction and more.

It's a satirical comedy shown through the day to day lives of a small group of friends.

I use the opportunity of visiting Fahmi in Bad Harzberg to reunite with other Cinema Nomad filmmakers in Berlin, and I delighted in the chance to introduce Fahmi to some of the filmmakers in our Cinema Nomad family.

Berlin has long been a haven for artistic souls to gather, live and create.

And in the years since Cinema Nomad began, many of our global filmmakers have found their way to Berlin to explore, work, create films, and continue to build their artistic lives.

Fahmi got to meet Sezen Kayhan and Itir Sezik, both from Turkiye My good friend and talented filmmaker Ricardo Bacallao originally from Cuba, Ognjen Isailovic from Serbia and Matt Bauer from Australia.

It was so nice to see Cinema Nomad come full circle and connect these global filmmakers with one another.

They are still chatting and Matt ended up screening his film “The Other Fellow” in Berlin as a result of these connections.

Life may have its ups and downs.

As creative people we're constantly forced to reckon with our life's choices.

Balancing artistic desires with human responsibilities.

Many artists throughout the ages have had to choose new homes and create lives for themselves in faraway places, while their hearts remain in their home country, rooted in their native culture.

Often, these dichotomies create the most interesting and relatable stories.

I'm happy to say that Fahmi is now the proud father of a healthy baby girl, and he and Jomana are now reunited as a family in Germany.

By attending Arabic film festivals in Europe and hosting online workshops for Gulf Country filmmakers, Fahmi keeps his feet in both worlds, holding onto his culture, stories and language of his fatherland while embracing the beauty and heritage of his motherland.

No matter where he is on the globe, I have no doubt that Fahmi will continue to creatively push the boundaries of the cinematic arts and strive to make society a better place for all of us to share together.

To learn more about the Cinema Nomad filmmakers and dive deeper into the exciting world of global cinema, Visit our website CinemaNomad.TV [ footsteps ] Steadee On [ film slate claps ] [ camel bells ]