Experiencing Interruptions?

Finding Yourself

After a botched meet-the-parents dinner, the debrief discussion with his girlfriend turns hostile, so he leaves her to cool down and he leaves to find himself. He literally finds it, and that part of his self wants to run the show now.

  • Abdulla Al Mahmood
    Director
  • Ebrahim Muhammed Khan
    Assistant Director
  • Abdulla Al Mahmood
    Writer
  • Abdulla Al Mahmood
    Producer
  • Majd Al Aradi
    Key Cast
  • Lujaine Yaqoob
    Key Cast
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    Supernatural, Horror
  • Runtime:
    7 minutes 39 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    September 28, 2024
  • Production Budget:
    0 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Bahrain
  • Country of Filming:
    Bahrain
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital, M4/3, BMPCC4k
  • Aspect Ratio:
    2:1
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Abdulla Al Mahmood

After failing to become a professional illustrator, I got selected for a training program at the national TV station in Bahrain in 2017. Up to that point, my only exposure to filmmaking then was a video course in a graphic design degree using Sony HD Handy cams (the ones with the incurable magenta shift) and editing on iMovie. Traumatized from that experience, and the humiliation of presenting an assignment with no resources to create (including qualified instructors), I swore I’d never touch video again. However, in TV, I fell in love with filmmaking, working with some of the best filmmakers in the Arab world.

The training led to a job at the TV station, and from there I poured over every filmmaking book, podcast, and YouTube video I could get my hands on, and I had numerous other filmmaking courses too.

I realized over time that no one would hand me a project to shoot, so I wrote my work and shot it, just to have something to shoot and a direct. So I did, and I kept doing it, and started putting someone on Youtube, and who knows where it all goes from there.

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Director Statement

I wrote and directed (and shot, edited, andVFX composited, and sound-designed) Finding Yourself because I wanted a bigger project than the YouTube short films that I create all the time, and I wanted it to be a dry run for the feature film in the future. I wrote this to process growing up as a “good boy” in a collectivist society. It turns out collectivist communities aren’t very reciprocal after all. Like all good boys, I became a doormat, and now spend hours and a significant amount of income on assertiveness training.

But it isn’t just about me, Majd and Lujaine have very interesting reasons to be in the film. They both resonated with the script, and they experienced their catharsis by playing the character. Even Ebrahim and I witnessing the performance, are both affected and experience it too. Or should a film not be a director’s catharsis, like that one Pixar executive said once? If not a director’s catharsis, then what should it be? A product?