Naim Zaboura graduated from New York Film Academy in Abu Dhabi in 2010, after which he began working on his first TV script for a show called Checking In, about 13 employees at a luxury hotel in Dubai. He wanted to create something similar to the hit American series Grey's Anatomy – in production value and scale.
Zaboura faced rejections from major TV networks, many of whom weren’t looking to produce English content in the Middle East.
“That’s crazy,” he says. “Dubai’s the new world hotspot, and people are hungry for English content on TV here. They said if I produced it on my own time, they might air it. But I’m not sitting on the pot of gold required to produce a series with 13 characters and a hotel at our disposal on my own.”
Zaboura then toyed with the idea of doing the show in his native language, but refused to make another dramatic, Arabic soap opera. That's when he decided to put his first attempt, Checking In, on the back-burner and started writing a new script with the plan to produce it independently on a low budget.
Zaboura's experience includes playing the lead character in Adam, a short film about how the conflict in Syria affects a man living in Abu Dhabi, which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May.
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