Animation Director
Ahmed Khattab is an award-winning animation director based in Dubai, working across the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the wider Gulf. He wrote and directed Children of Barzagh, a fully handcrafted 2D animated short distributed by Watermelon Pictures, and served as Creative Director and Series Director on a ten-episode 3D anthology for the Saudi Heritage Commission.
Animation direction from first frame to final grade
As an animation director, Ahmed shapes a film long before a single frame is drawn or rendered. He builds the world, defines the visual language, sets the tone and pacing, then guides the animation, sound and edit until the finished piece carries a single clear intent. His range spans hand-drawn 2D and fully realised 3D, and he chooses the technique that serves the story rather than the other way around. He explores that choice further in 2D vs 3D Animation: Choosing the Right Craft for Your Film in the Journal.
That instinct runs through Children of Barzagh, a fully handcrafted 2D short he wrote and directed, which drew strong festival attention worldwide and won significant local and international awards. The film is distributed by Watermelon Pictures and streams on Watermelon+, and it remains the clearest expression of how he treats animation as authored cinema rather than decoration.
Craft that holds up at scale
Direction at scale means protecting the idea across long production timelines and large teams. On the Islamic Anthology Series, a ten-episode 3D animated anthology for the Saudi Heritage Commission, Ahmed worked as Creative Director and Series Director, keeping ten chapters visually and tonally coherent while each focused on a different historic Saudi site. The work is grounded in extensive historical research and forms a narrative foundation for future cultural and tourism destinations.
He also directed Regional Museums for Our Saudi Story, a film that blends live action with hand-drawn animation to introduce upcoming regional museums. Across these projects the through line is consistent, animation used to make heritage, place and story legible to a wide audience. Ahmed is Creative Director at MassHouse Studio and Executive Producer at Flint Culture, and his festival record includes wins at the Red Sea International Film Festival and the Oscar-qualifying Alexandria International Film Festival.