About

ALEEM HOSSAIN

I’m a writer/director of feature films, TV, and experimental cinema.

I grew up in a Connecticut town so small that Pizza Hut would not deliver there until 1997… but my family was very diverse and international. My father is a Muslim from Bangladesh who immigrated to the US. My mother was born and raised in Connecticut in a Roman Catholic family with roots in Italy, Spain, England, Ireland, and France. I grew up watching baseball and Bollywood, eating curry under a Christmas tree, and waiting for the day when Oreos would no longer use lard as an ingredient… also not until 1997! This multi-cultural mashup has shaped me as an artist.

Most recently, I wrote and directed AFTER WE LEAVE, a gritty sci-fi drama feature film that won BEST FEATURE FILM at SCI FI LONDON and BEST DIRECTOR at BERLIN SCI-FI. It was released theatrically in February 2020 and is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video. Film Threat called it “a shining example of indie filmmaking at its finest” and The Hollywood Reporter called it “A serious-minded feature debut… it reminds us that we are already living in the future.”

My short film THE THIN ORANGE LINE, a genre-blending violent cop film with a Bollywood dancing orange bear, premiered at Beyond Fest at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. “An unexpectedly madcap film that flips a familiar cop narrative on its head” – Beyond Fest

I was an artist-in-residence at the 2017 VR Action Lab where I created NO EASY ANSWERS, a VR anti-bullying project, in collaboration with Google, Harmony Labs, and Screenwriters Colony. It has been translated into several languages and is used by Google Daydream in schools around the world.

My TV pilot script THE HALF-LIFE OF AZIM & JULIE was selected for the Muslim Public Affairs Council’s Screenwriting Lab and is currently in development with BoomGen Entertainment.

My hybrid fiction/documentary/animation short film ON THE BLUE TABLE had its world premiere at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles.

I am also the ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF DIGITAL STORYTELLING at OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE in Los Angeles where I teach film and TV writing and directing with a focus on expanding the kinds of stories we tell and who gets to tell them.