PRO|FILM
JUNE 2026
CONNECTING CINEMA, STUDENTS AND THE FILM INDUSTRY Razan Takash wears many hats in the region’s filmmaking scene: a writer, producer and director of short films; Creative Director of the Black Sheep Festival; and Head of Film and Senior Lecturer at SAE University College Dubai. Her most impressive story, however, is the path to where she is today. Sarah Nathan sat down with Takash to learn more about her creative journey Razan Takash did not always have her sights set on a career in storytelling. As a child, she dreamed of becoming a veterinarian. However, a brief internship during high school in her home country, Jordan, quickly revealed that working with injured animals was not her calling: “It was too sad and I just couldn’t do it.” An avid theatre kid, Takash wrote and directed multiple plays in high school. She spent much of her week at the movies and regularly watched film coverage on television. Once a film was released on DVD, Takash would promptly watch the director’s commentary. “Titanic was my first exposure to what goes on behind the scenes,” she recalls. “I watched it several times at the cinema and I was always so fascinated by how they built the ship and other production aspects.” Still, she never considered filmmaking as a profession. At 18, Takash enrolled as a multimedia student at the American University of Sharjah. Again, she 18
quickly discovered the field was not her future: “I wasn’t artistic enough to stick with the design aspects of the course, so I remained undeclared.” An elective film course called for her to create a short film – her first – as part of its final assignment. Her professor, Kim Bigelow, suggested a career in film and appointed her to be her teaching assistant, which gave her access to books on film, learning resources, equipment and the opportunity to create more short films and, ultimately, her future. “From then on, I knew this is what I was supposed to do.” In 2009, Takash released her next short film, Mitwarret, a blackand-white political thriller about revolutionaries amid regional instability in Jordan in 2008. Soon after, she enrolled at the Red Sea Institute of Cinematic Arts, ultimately earning a Master of Fine Arts in Cinematic Arts. Early in her career, Takash consistently sought experience on
Hollywood productions. Scoring an internship on Zero Dark Thirty and later hired to work on the set of Star Wars: The Force Awakens in the UAE, she witnessed “another planet of filmmaking”. Her regional work included producing, directing and serving as first assistant director on TV productions with notable channels such as ADTV and MBC. While she primarily created psychological thrillers in her twenties, Takash eventually gravitated towards genre films. Her most recent project as a writer/producer, Karayr, premiered in December 2025. A post-apocalyptic short film directed by Neo Apelian, it is set in the aftermath of a biological war that has reduced mankind to ape-like creatures and follows a lone survivor trying to civilise one of these cavemen. It was filmed in Jordan with the support of local crew and production houses. After eight years of developing the film, Takash is still stunned that it ever saw the light of day. For