Hanaa Saleh Alfassi

Before her discussions around television deals, before being selected for multiple Red Sea International Film Festival workshops, there was just a girl who craved the creative expression of storytelling. For her, it was a fact of life. This girl was Hanaa Saleh Alfassi, a Saudi-born screenwriter and director.  

During her childhood, Hanaa and her family moved from Saudi to Egypt, where she remained through college. While in school, Hanaa lived somewhat of a double life – by day, she was hard at work pursuing a bachelor’s degree in mass communications, but by night, Hanaa could be found at film school. Both avenues allowed her to explore her interests, but for Hanaa, only one clicked: film. Time on set was the highlight of her week. Post-graduation, she went on to intern at an advertising agency in Morocco. Upon the position’s conclusion, her budding career led Hanaa back to Saudi where she worked as a screenwriter for MBC. In fact, her “office” was the country’s first writer’s room! With priceless experience and an evergreen passion, Hanaa then relocated to her current home, California, where she continued her education in film.   

The focused vision and courage needed to continuously cross borders in pursuit of a career – at such a young age, nonetheless – can be traced back to her parents. In every facet, whether it was quitting the high school tennis team or making a career pivot, “they gave me the opportunity to explore,” she says. “My parents never judged me…they wanted me to be myself. I’m always going be loved and accepted by them.”  

Hanaa’s parents were devoted to keeping her best interest at heart. Naturally, when Hanaa first started taking film classes at night, which were an hour away from her college campus, she admits that “they were very stressed out; they were questioning” whether she was safe. But Hanaa talked with them, toured them around set, and introduced them to her instructors; she brought them into her world. It became apparent that this was where she belonged. This relationship proved foundational in the way she would approach her career. 

Her effective communication skills, first previewed in the open dialogue she shared with her parents, evolved as she worked on set in Riyadh and Jeddah. Trust on the job can be built simply through the “small things you say.” Early on, Hanaa recognized that this trust would be important for achieving results on set and fostering professional connections. To gain experience, the industry’s competitive nature called for her to “talk to all the departments, follow up, and keep contact” with those she encountered. At times when job opportunities were scarce, networking kept her immersed in the business.  

Connecting with her unique upbringing enhanced her professional work. There “was a whole arc to learn how to express myself through my writing. There’s this weird…thing where we don’t want to be vulnerable and exposed in any way.” By observing her peers and listening to her instructors, though, she began to identify with the breadcrumbs of herself that found their way into her scripts.  

One storyline she confidently embraces now is that she’s a “third culture kid…the Egyptian, the Moroccan, the Saudi.” Allowing her real life to shine through fictional worlds has centered her writing. She now knows what she wants to say, and why she wants to say it.  

This confidence translates into her solution-oriented outlook, which she developed while immersed in the fast-paced world of commercials: “If there’s a mistake, I say ‘OK… let’s not dwell, let’s move on. What can we do to make this better?’” Her focus is not on who messed up, but rather on who is going to save the day. When faced with challenges, this demeanor makes for efficient and accurate problem-solving.  

Reflecting on the hurdles she’s overcome, Hanaa reminds us of the phrase, “If it doesn’t work out, it’s not meant to be,” and explains how she finds it to be incomplete, failing to identify that “it’s not meant to be because I didn’t go after it enough – long enough, hard enough – to really make it happen.” In other words, Hanaa stands firm in her ideology that “the ones that persist…are the ones that get in at the end. Not because they’re better necessarily, but because they made sure to stay in it.”   

One step at a time, Hanaa took her impenetrable mindset and got to work: “It’s very important to just start at the beginning… start observing… it makes you stronger on set when it’s your time to direct a big project.” This has certainly proven true for her, with each of her projects becoming larger than the last, foreshadowing exponential growth for her future. What will she do next? Follow her journey on Instagram at @hanasalehalfasi! 

Written by Sydney Leclerc