I’m a native New Yorker who somehow ended up at a Jesuit private school on the Upper East Side despite being of Pakistani/Muslim and European/Jewish descent. I attended undergrad at Columbia University, where I majored in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies and followed the pre-medical track.

I was a science journalist after graduation, and fell in love with all things filmmaking after working on a Ken Burns-EP’d docuseries based on Siddhartha Mukherjee’s book Gene at Ark Media. I graduated with my MFA in Cinema Arts from Brooklyn College’s Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema in June 2023.

Most of my screenwriting work addresses what it was like growing up Muslim in post-9/11 America through the lenses of satire and coming of age. My debut experimental short, “Zero”, won an Award of Merit at Best Shorts Competition, and was accepted into Flickfair and MicroMania, as well. 

I debuted my first narrative short film, “Saint Marks”, at Queer Voices: New York City last September. It had its online debut at the NYWIFT x iWoman TV online film festival, where it won an audience choice award.

I am currently in various stages of production for several music videos, a proof of concept short film, writing two features, and waiting to hear back from more film festivals regarding “Saint Marks”.