I discovered myself in the back-and-forth and in the hyphenated Arab-American way, and one of the things that I discovered was that I really didn't fit in anywhere. So in the US, I was considered an Arab - because I grew up in small-town Ohio - and in the Middle East, I was considered the American.

From as early as I can remember, I wanted to have something to do with the acting business. I was a TV junkie as a kid and I think, because I grew up in a small town where I couldn't imagine myself staying there and couldn't see myself being any of the people that I was surrounded by in this town, I just knew that I wanted a different kind of a life, but I didn't know what that meant and I didn't know how.

Keep doing what you're doing no matter what anyone says. Defy your own doubt.

I have to try to watch myself and give myself feedback. People would take for granted that I was ready to go right away. And I would say, "No, no, no, no, I actually have to go talk to myself." Because I need to just take a minute to think about what just happened and tell myself what to do in the next take, so just give me two minutes to go be a director.

I discovered myself in the back-and-forth and in the hyphenated Arab-American way, and one of the things that I discovered was that I really didn't fit in anywhere. So in the US, I was considered an Arab - because I grew up in small-town Ohio - and in the Middle East, I was considered the American.

It's why I fell in love with movies. You can sit in a movie theater and be transported to a place that you never get to go and be a person who you never in your life would get to be and feel something and have empathy for people and see things from another point of view.

I was really inspired by my own experience, and specifically my own identity crisis but larger than that, I also wanted to explore the trend of reverse immigration, of the immigrant returning home after being in a host country or an adopted home for 20 years, and finding themselves at various levels of discord with the home culture. I wanted to explore people building lives across multiple geographies. I think that's, something that we're experiencing more and more as travel becomes easier, as people are traveling more for work. People can work from anywhere.