About Kaleido Pictures

Mission

To champion a new wave of cinema in the Middle East by amplifying emerging voices to tell authentic, visionary and transformative stories.

Vision

To sustain Kaleido as the region's foremost youth-founded film collective, cultivating a community of passionate creatives who redefine boundaries, amplify untold voices and shape the future of film.Kaleido Pictures

Two crew members check a shot on a cinema camera

The story

Films first. Then a community. Now a classroom.

Productions

Make the films

Founder Adham Gira started making films in December 2024. After running into the same walls every emerging filmmaker in the UAE hits, no crew, no gear, no way in, he founded Kaleido on 7 April 2025 to connect the growing film space. Emerging crews kept making shorts, with more than a thousand filmmakers rotating through as crew and cast. Those films found an audience: more than 300 million views and 180,000 followers across platforms, and award recognition for the work itself.

Experiences

Open the doors

Open casting events, the Fujifilm x Kaleido 72-Hour Film Competition, screenings and workshops turned a crew into a community. Our Kaleido Experiences team runs the events where a first-timer meets a working set for the first time.

Bridge

Go to the schools

The Bridge Programme takes the same approach into secondary schools as an extracurricular programme, in the mould of Model UN or the Duke of Edinburgh's Award: three days of hands-on filmmaking for students aged 14 to 18, then a path to keep going. It starts in UAE schools with room to grow across the MENA region.

Leadership

Who runs it.

Adham Gira

Founder and Director

Award-winning filmmaker and writer. Adham started making films in December 2024, at sixteen, and founded Kaleido on 7 April 2025 after experiencing first-hand how hard it was to connect the growing film space in the UAE. He has directed its films since, including Szerelem, the collective's first feature, and built the audience that now runs past 300 million views. Every crew and cast call goes out through his account first.

@thedubaifilmer

Ethan Wheeler

Co-Founder and Director of Operations

Ethan directs all internal operations at Kaleido and leads the Bridge Programme's move into schools. He runs the systems behind the collective, from onboarding and recruitment to production logistics, and in 2026 co-founded Kaleido Motion Pictures - DWC LLC, the Dubai South free zone company behind Kaleido.

On set

The crew.

Directors, cinematographers, gaffers, sound recordists, production designers and producers. Most of them met here.

Crew gather around a phone to review a shot

A director gestures while explaining a shot

Crew member films behind the scenes on a phone

Director at the monitor while actors rehearse at the table

Clapperboard resting on a foosball table between setups

Built by the people it's for.