Dreams of saltwater quench my thirst (2025), film, handmade screen, hanging mesh sculpture

This film is situated in a drought as desert climates face worsening climate change. In the film, I reimagine the story of Hajar, the prophet Abraham's second wife who was abandoned in a desert with her infant child. Dehydrated and searching for water, she sees a mirage in the distance and runs towards it only to find more sand. Then she imagines one where she just came running from and runs back. She runs between two mountains approximately a mile apart seven times before the seventh mirage miraculously turns into a stream of water. This stream, called Zamzam, still exists today in the desert on the outskirts of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Zamzam is holy water in Islam; the path Hajar ran is traced seven times each year by millions of Muslims as a part of the Hajj pilgrimage.

In my film, each mirage immerses the runner (me) in a hallucination/dreamscape where I share moments with my family members as they perform rituals connected with water or swim in the ocean. The final draft of the film will ultimately grapple with the end of human lineage, the formation of oil from ancient, buried fossils, human extraction of oil from deserts and oceans, and the ecological effects of human burial.