The UAE's first female filmmaker

Nayla Al Kahja, the first female filmmaker and producer in the UAE, was named one of the 50 most powerful personalities in Arab cinema. CEO of her self-produced firm D-SEVEN Motion Pictures and D-SEVEN FZ LLC, a marketing and design agency that offers full Media campaign and corporate branding services, she was the first Emirati director and film producer to win the International Prize for Young Screen Entrepreneurs from the British Council in 2010. Since she started her artistic activity in 2005, Al Kahja has written, directed and produced 4 short movies.'The loss' (2005); 'Arabana' (2006), which touched on the sensitive topic of child abuse, and was used by UNICEF in one of its awareness campaigns; ' Once' (2009) and 'Malal' (2010), which won Best Script Award in the Gulf Film Festival in 2010 and shortly after became the first Emirati-Indian film shot in Kerala. The film debuted at the Dubai International Film Festival and immediately won a place in the Muhr Emirati category. In a recent interview she was quoted as saying: ‘I would say the majority support what I do. It’s only a few people that are upset, but then you can’t make everyone happy. And that’s not my goal anyway, so that’s fine.' As the UAE's first ever female filmmaker, Al Kahja has encountered plenty of prejudice both due to her sex and her willingness to tackle taboo subjects. ‘My parents were completely against me getting into film — there aren’t any other women filmmakers in the country, so there’s no-one else to look at as an example,’ Al Khaja recalls. ‘They were very worried, and my dad insisted that I make documentaries, rather than narratives. But narratives are all that I’m interested in.’ Nayla is also the guiding force behind The Scene Club, the UAE’s first official film club featuring independent cinema. In short, she has a hand in every film pie in the UAE, and is now slowly spreading her wings in the region.