\n
<\/p>\n
JEDDAH: From filmmaking to game design, Mariam Khayat likes taking creative leaps \u2014 and her story reveals a Kingdom ripe with opportunities for Saudis willing to pivot.<\/p>\n
Khayat is the cofounder of Cinepoetics Pictures, the Jeddah-based studio behind \u201cThe Menace from Above\u201d and \u201cSaleeg,\u201d now streaming on Netflix. She is a filmmaker, producer, animator, student of coral reef management and, most recently, a video game developer.<\/p>\n
This summer, she was one of 30 participants chosen from around 400 applicants for the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology\u2019s She Plays, She Builds program, an initiative designed to give women practical experience in game development, digital content creation and artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was truly exciting to learn alongside other women and share this experience with them,\u201d Khayat told Arab News.<\/p>\n
The program led her to a Discord server, where Saudi girls and women connect over gaming. \u201cI was surprised to find over a thousand Saudi girls, between gamers and game designers and game enthusiasts,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was truly intriguing, exciting, and comforting as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
In an industry Khayat describes as \u201cmale-dominated,\u201d the ministry initiative reflects a wider expansion of opportunities for Saudi women into fields that sit at the intersection of technology and creativity.<\/p>\n
Having held ambitions to create video games from a young age, she knew when she saw the announcement that \u201cit was time to go back to what mattered to my younger self and what I\u2019d neglected in pursuit of other endeavors.\u201d<\/p>\n
The six-week sprint into game design led Khayat to create a fully playable puzzle game called \u201cZainat Al-Behar,\u201d about a ten-year-old girl cleaning up the Red Sea coast.<\/p>\n
With just 10 days reserved to develop the game, she worked within the limits of her experience while drawing on a tremendous love for the sea and marine conservation, and an affinity for puzzle games. After asking herself: \u201cWhat game would I love to play and can be proud to make?,\u201d \u201cZainat Al-Behar\u201d began to materialize.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want people to feel the serenity and the charm of the sea, to enjoy its blueness and its warmth, but to then have that experience also tainted with some of humans\u2019 trash and neglect,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Like the short \u201cThe Menace from Above,\u201d the game frames the global issue of marine conservation from the perspective of a small but mighty protagonist.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do feel like a small girl trying to protect the vast seas, in a world bigger than myself,\u201d Khayat said. \u201cI may not be able to save the oceans alone, but when a game or a film reaches out to thousands of people, each with different minds and capabilities, change is more likely to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Discussing the process of creating the fully playable game, she added: \u201cIt\u2019s my own creation, with several levels, and not just a replica for the purpose of learning or dissecting another existing game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Where the program used AI, Khayat employed it narrowly, almost warily, for coding assistance, minor visual assets and software troubleshooting, before drawing a hard line.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it comes to the story of \u2018Zainat Al-Behar,\u2019 the ideas, the gameplay, and all the creative things, that\u2019s all human brain,\u201d she explained. \u201cI believe no AI can \u2018create\u2019 something that is original enough. I don\u2019t think it fathoms \u2018exciting\u2019 or \u2018novel\u2019 or enough of the Saudi culture. Maybe not yet, but I doubt it still.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the game\u2019s art and music, she turned to her own community rather than a generative tool, working with Ethar Ba\u2019amer on visuals and Yusuf Radwan on the score.<\/p>\n
\u201cI truly enjoy human collaboration, especially on creative projects,\u201d the filmmaker said. \u201c(There\u2019s) nothing like bouncing ideas with people who are passionate and well versed in what they do.\u201d<\/p>\n
She believes that relying on generative AI heavily to create visual assets deprives the designers of the artist within them, turning them into \u201cjust AI users instead of true individual creators.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cZainat Al-Behar\u201d has legs, but its creator has not mapped out a future for it beyond the prototype. However, said Khayat: \u201cIf some conservation entity, game studio or investor sees a larger potential in it, then of course I\u2019d be happy to write it further or produce it and turn it into something bigger.\u201d<\/p>\n
Khayat is more animated about where Saudi gaming is heading generally, describing it as an industry outpacing many of the Kingdom\u2019s other creative sectors, buoyed by government backing and a peculiar power to travel.<\/p>\n
\u201cGames are a powerful and highly immersive storytelling medium that tends to travel way faster than others, especially due to its ability to translate easily to any language,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The Red Sea, which has long been a personal source of fascination, has increasingly become part of her creative vista. Conservation informs her storytelling, while storytelling anchors it emotionally.<\/p>\n
She is currently studying coral reef management online with Conservation Training, with plans to pursue additional courses. \u201cThe more I learn and understand the ecosystem better \u2026 the clearer picture I have,\u201d she said. \u201cI already have several new ideas for video games, films and TV shows!\u201d<\/p>\n
She has begun to see the Red Sea not merely as a subject but as a world populated with characters, conflicts and possibilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs I\u2019m learning more about the reefs and marine conservation and the Red Sea, I can already visualize new characters, picture some stories, and imagine different conversations and storylines,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
In her storytelling across various media forms, the characters are by design unglamorous and feel real. \u201cSaleeg,\u201d directed by Afnan Bawyan and co-produced by Khayat, is a great example.<\/p>\n
The stop-motion film is centered on an elderly woman in Jeddah\u2019s Al-Balad Historic District, whose cooking accidentally floods her home. It is a story of culinary heritage and how food connects people when language fails. When it premiered at Annecy, it was selected also for its Perspectives program.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like to bring to the screen relatable characters with genuine emotions and experiences, who look like us: Saudi, Arab and Muslim,\u201d Khayat said. \u201cAnd also, passionate, patriotic, ambitious, sometimes lost, and other times depressed or anxious.\u201d<\/p>\n
Writing complicated characters is part of representation.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes those characters are a brave, selfless fish in the Red Sea, and other times it\u2019s a nerd gamer from the outskirts of Riyadh,\u201d she said. \u201cAll characters and stories can be relatable, as long as they\u2019re being written with honesty and craft.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, \u201cThe Menace from Above\u201d <\/em>follows a fish in the shallow waters of the Red Sea confronting a monster that turns out to be plastic waste.<\/p>\n Khayat wrote, directed and produced the animated short, which was completed in 2022 and later screened internationally. It won best animation at the ninth Saudi Film Festival in 2023 and has earned awards and recognition in Ireland, Bahrain and the US.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not a small feat to be recognized by film industries that have existed decades before it started in Saudi Arabia,\u201d she said. \u201cBut over time, you realize that what matters more is when you know that your film has touched someone, or got someone thinking about your film, or have them asking questions and pondering over life.<\/p>\n \u201cSince we have only two film festivals in Saudi Arabia so far, I actually care more about reaching local audiences than global ones,\u201d she added. \u201cSaudis are the toughest audience and critics, especially for Saudi films.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked what she would tell a young Saudi woman contemplating an idea that feels too technical, unfamiliar or improbable, she said: \u201cThere\u2019s no such thing as too ambitious. Find like-minded women, because usually empowered women empower women.\u201d<\/p>\n Khayat recently joined Qissar, a new theatre program launched in Jeddah by Fennec in which Saudi actors perform monologues or monodramas. Her 15-minute piece, \u201cThe Third Floor,\u201d marks another newly pursued creative interest and hobby that she describes as both \u201cchallenging and fun.\u201d<\/p>\n She is currently writing \u201cZohal,\u201d her first animated feature, which she says is a \u201cfamily film about a teenage protagonist who believes that he\u2019s destined for greatness, if only his family wasn\u2019t holding him back.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n