About

A Life Between Worlds

My relationship to storytelling began long before filmmaking.

My family arrived in the United States as refugees from Afghanistan, and I grew up navigating multiple cultural realities shaped by displacement, conflict, and belonging. Later, my service in the Peace Corps and my work as a military interpreter in combat environments deepened my understanding of how language, power, and narrative operate under pressure—how meaning shifts depending on who is speaking, who is listening, and what is at stake.

These experiences continue to inform my work not simply as subject matter, but as a way of seeing. They shaped an approach grounded in listening, ethical responsibility, and long-term relationships with the people and communities I work alongside.

The Work

My films explore how individuals and societies make meaning in moments of rupture and change. I am drawn to stories that resist simplification and hold space for ambiguity, dignity, and complexity—stories where narrative carries real consequence.

Across my work, authorship is inseparable from responsibility, and craft is inseparable from care. I am interested in stories that do not rush toward resolution, but instead create space for deeper understanding, human connection, and more honest ways of seeing one another.

The Taleem Project

This practice is carried forward through The Taleem Project, an independent media and narrative intelligence studio I founded to support films, ideas, and collaborations that engage story with depth and intention.

Through The Taleem Project, I work across documentary filmmaking, executive producing, advisory roles, keynote speaking, workshops, leadership development, and public engagement—helping filmmakers, institutions, and organizations navigate the stories shaping trust, belonging, perception, and decision-making.

At the center of this work is a simple belief: narrative is not content. It is context.