My Driver and I: dir Ahd Kamel (2024)

The last in NYUAD Arts Center’s fall film season, a series which explores history, identity, and belonging through Arab and international cinema, while offering audiences the chance to engage directly with filmmakers is inspired by the childhood of Saudi writer-director-producer Ahd Kamel. Set in Jeddah in the 1980s and 90s, the film traces the unlikely friendship between a rebellious Saudi teenager and her Sudanese driver, capturing the ways independence and belonging are negotiated in everyday life. He drives her in a car, but ultimately enables her to take the wheel of her own life’s journey.

Kamel said, “My Driver and I is my most personal film, an act of remembrance and gratitude. It’s about friendship that transcends social roles, about love that hides in everyday moments, and about the silent bonds that shape us long after the person is gone. In telling this story, I wanted to honour Mohi, my driver, who was never just that – he was family, he was home.”

The screening will be followed by a live conversation with Kamel.