How I Went from Writing Words to Making Movies

Yet while everyone is consumed by their individual roles, they remain unaware of the deeper, quieter stories that shape their lives. These stories are the ghosts behind the scenes. Not the dramatic kind you see in movies. No, these are quieter, more patient. They follow you into the corners of your mind, whispering just loud enough to keep you awake.

If you’re lucky, they’ll follow you forever.

If you’re unlucky, well, they’ll do the same.

In my story, I had no choice but to turn those ghosts into words.

I wasn’t born with a pen in hand. Those stories belong to fairy tales, and I’ve never trusted fairy tales much. But looking back, it almost feels like I could’ve been. I spent my life filling notebooks with scraps of stories, half-baked ideas, and wandering lines of poetry. Even my first letters to Santa carried the vivid imaginings of a child who didn’t yet understand the power of words. I just knew that they were magic. Like you could take something invisible and make it real.

Then I grew up. That’s how it works, right? You trade magic for a steady nine-to-five, call it maturity, and convince yourself it’s the smart move. Writing, I decided, was for the tortured geniuses you see on screen. The ones with cigarettes perched between their lips and whiskey glasses in hand. Real life didn’t have space for that. Real-life needed degrees, paychecks, and a mask to hide behind.

So I buried my dreams under layers of practicality. Or at least, I tried to.

Because the rebel in me never really fit that mask.

If you’ve ever tried to bury that itch to create, you know how it follows you. It haunts you like a ghost calling your name when everything else goes quiet. And ghosts like that don’t scare off easily.

For me, it began right there, at the crossroads of words and purpose.

Because writing wasn’t just a passion. It was the first step toward a truth I had been chasing all along.

Out of Place, Out of Bounds

The road to that truth began long ago, back when I was a quiet kid — not shy, but the kind of quiet born of sharp eyes and a restless imagination. I grew up in a foreign place, both to my roots and in my spirit. Art didn’t bloom there. People didn’t linger over music or books or beauty. Conversations revolved around the weather — always the weather — work, and what needed fixing. Everything outside was and felt perpetually gray.

But at home, there was color. Home was where art flourished. In my bedtime storybooks, Disney VHS tapes, strange old novels, in my dad’s Dire Straits records and my mom’s Kodak DC40. Those were my doorways. For a kid who always felt like an alien dropped into the wrong town, in the wrong year, on the wrong planet, those doorways were everything.

When I was old enough to pick up a pen, it wasn’t just to write about imaginary people or parallel worlds I wished to escape into. It was to speak to them and through them. To uncover their stories, and perhaps my own. To this day, I find it hard to tell where theirs stop and mine begin. When words weren’t enough, I made up languages. Some kids had imaginary friends. I had entire imaginary systems. Weird? Maybe.

But for me, it made perfect sense. It was the only way to breathe in a world that often felt suffocating.

And as time went on, life had other plans. Like it always does.

The world doesn’t like dreamers. The world likes you neat and safe, tied up with a bow. So I folded myself into a box labeled “practical.” I turned writing into a sterile, respectable job and told myself it would do.

Well, it didn’t.

Because creativity doesn’t quit. It’s the ghost that gnaws at your ribs and pulls at your sleeve, whispering, There’s more. I didn’t know what “more” was until one rainy afternoon in London.

I was sitting in a café, staring at a blank page, when I noticed an old man outside with his German Shepherd. They weren’t doing anything remarkable, just standing there in the drizzle. But something about the quiet connection between them stopped me cold.

Words could evoke emotions, yes, but how do you capture silences?

How do you write the pauses between the words?

The real moments, the ones that linger in the air like ghosts?

That’s when it hit me.

Cinema.

That was it — the missing piece. The language that rips stories off the page and throws them into the visual world. Color, sound, light, shadow. A language where every element comes together like a gang of misfits who somehow clicked perfectly.

If writing was my foundation, cinema became my voice.

As poetic as that sounds, it felt like coming home to a place I didn’t know I had lost.

It was like opening the door to a room I’d been in before but couldn’t remember until I crossed the threshold. Everything about it felt natural, instinctive as if the very rhythm of that space had always been waiting for me. All I had to do was step inside.

The Voice and the Void

The path isn’t glamorous. It’s brutal, unrelenting, and far from the polished sheen you might see from the outside. As an artist, you wrestle with emotions while navigating a life that offers no stability. You sacrifice the comforts most people take for granted — relationships, financial security, the certainty of a predictable future.

On the outside, you’re expected to project strength. Assertive, confident, sometimes even ruthless.

But on the inside, you struggle with sleepless nights, doubts, and challenges that test your strength and spirit.

And yet, in those darkest moments, something always pulls you through. It’s the knowledge that, in your hands, you hold an opportunity.

An opportunity to speak directly to someone’s soul.

To touch a life. To create something that matters.

To find your own voice.

Of course, it wasn’t some sudden revelation but a gradual unfolding.

Over time, I came to understand that finding your voice isn’t about some grand epiphany. It’s a lifelong excavation.

A careful process of digging, sifting, and discovering.

And the stories I’m drawn to tell are the ones that slip under your ribs.

The ones that tear you apart just enough to put you back together again.

Because at their core, those stories are built on one essential ingredient. Empathy.

The Art of Being an Alchemist

Empathy is a double-edged sword. It can split you wide open, or it can piece you back together. The challenge, especially in filmmaking, is learning how to use it as a tool, as a way to channel emotions.

I like to think that I use it as a lens that lets me cut through the surface and dive straight into the beating heart of a story. It allows me to bypass the noise, distractions, and surface-level façades to get to the truth.

Because that’s what people connect to. Truth.

At its simplest, empathy is a way to heal. It heals the story, the audience, and sometimes even the storyteller. When you let empathy lead the way, it doesn’t just build better stories — it builds you, too.

That’s the true magic of cinema: its ability to create connection, forging a bond between creator and viewer.

What I’ve learned, and continue to learn, is that the stories I tell are shaped by a desire to bring understanding to those who carry the invisible weight of existence. The pain of living, as I’ve come to call it.

Like some half-mad alchemist, I believe you can take the mess, the pain, the chaos, and turn it into something that shines.

If I had to define myself — whether as an artist, a writer, a visual storyteller, or simply as a human being — it would come down to one thing: the belief that you can take the wreckage life throws at you, the broken bits and sharp edges, and turn it into something that makes sense. It’s about taking the chaos, the grief, the unbearable pain, and twisting it into a kind of truth. That act of transformation, of turning the darkest moments into something meaningful is at the very core of my identity.

Through the Story, Into the Mirror

I don’t believe in films made solely for their creators as self-serving exercises to inflate egos.

Nor do I believe in films crafted purely to pander to trends or shallow audience expectations.

I believe that dedicating yourself to art — any kind of art — is an act of dedication. It’s about uncovering something raw and true that transcends yourself. It’s the kind of work that demands you to confront your darkest corners and bleed every ounce of pain, fear, joy, and relief onto the page until you’re left with nothing but some kind of truth staring back at you.

Because for a story to matter, it has to speak to you first. It has to resonate deeply. It has to resonate deeply within you, stir something primal, before it can hope to reach anyone else.

Without sincerity, a film loses its purpose.

Stories aren’t just an escape. They’re a mirror, reflecting how we hurt, how we heal, how we break, and how we mend. When the lights dim and the screen flickers to life, the boundaries between us dissolve. In those fleeting moments, we’re just people sitting together in the dark, trying to make sense of it all.

The Never-Ending Story

I’ve always believed art can change the world.

Not through grand, earth-shattering gestures but by planting a seed. Maybe it starts as a spark — an idea, a flicker of emotion, a strange feeling that lingers in the air. You don’t notice it at first. It slips into the cracks of your mind, the ones you didn’t even know were there.

And then, slowly, it grows.

My story is far from over. If anything, it has just begun. There are still countless frames to fill, worlds to build, strange and wonderful stories to uncover. In fact, I don’t think it ever really ends.

Because here’s what no one tells you: stories don’t end when the credits roll. Nor when the screen goes dark. They evolve.

They slip into the cracks, into the spaces you didn’t even know were there.

Maybe that’s the real magic of it all — how something so intangible can change you in ways you never saw coming.

Maybe the point isn’t the end. It’s the search itself.

That’s what fuels the grind: the search for an ending that was never meant to exist in the first place. The pursuit of something that always seems just out of reach.

Call it a ghost, call it a whisper, but I keep pursuing it — with a camera in one hand and a pen in the other.

That’s why I write. That’s why I make films.

Not for the noise. Not for the applause. For the stillness afterward.

For that moment when the lights come back on, and someone just sits there, staring at the credits, feeling something that changes them in a way they can’t quite explain. That’s my way of planting those seeds.

That’s my way of leaning in and whispering, Look at this. Think about it.

Feel it. And when you’re ready, let it speak to you.

If I can give even one person that — a moment where they feel seen, understood, less alone — then every sleepless night, every gnawing doubt, every struggle has been worth it.

Because in the end, it’s not the fame or the accolades or even the finished films that matter. It’s in the faces of strangers lit by the glow of a story, each one carrying their own invisible weight, their own ghosts.

Isn’t that what we’re all looking for? To be seen. To be understood.

To know we’re not alone.

My story isn’t a fairy tale. I have no clue what comes next or how it’s going to end. But I do know this: I’ll keep chasing the ghost, the story, the stillness.

Because as long as there are stories to tell and people willing to hear them, the real end doesn’t exist.

It only dissolves to black…