Tanya Shamil: Blurring the Lines Between Imagination and Reality

Tanya Shamil was raised by storytelling. Known for emotionally resonant stories that blend satire and tragedy, the Omani playwright, screenwriter, and filmmaker has been creating since she was a teenager, and was barely in her twenties when she has made a name for herself. She is best known for When We Arrive, a film that follows a group of refugees stuck in a truck together while crossing a border.

Her fascination with the arts was derived from a broader longing to traverse the boundaries of reality, inserting herself into fictional lives. Shamil’s “endlessly imaginative” grandmother was the first person who made her fall in love with storytelling. She was an English teacher and created an imaginary cousin  called Zahra, who became the cause of constant comparisons. “Honestly, part of my drive comes from a desire to measure up to someone who only existed in stories,” she explains. “If I didn’t pick something up, she’d say, ‘My granddaughter Zahra would always clean.’ That mix of longing and fascination with invented lives, and the parallel lives we imagine for ourselves, is what led me to theatre and film.”

Shamil’s instinct to traverse boundaries continued to grow with her. Her creative process, she credits entirely to an abundant curiosity and questioning. The artist is fascinated by the origin of events and people, tracing back their histories. “Part of me is drawn to the contradictions we live with: the mistakes we hide, the shame we carry, the buried resentments, the moments we feel like failures,” she says. “I want to embrace and amplify all of that—not to excuse it, but to acknowledge it because it’s there. It exists, and it’s human.”

In this way, Shamil’s choices of genre reflect this attempt to uncover what’s buried, playing with emotion and experience in its darkest corners. She does this with a particular approach, one that aims to subvert audiences’ understanding of universal themes of identity by revealing it subtly, with humour and irony. “I poke at our particularities while showing how deeply universal they can be.” With experimentation a through line, she hopes for stories to continue unsettling audiences and, more potently, challenging how the region’s art and culture is perceived. This, in its essence, encourages an unafraid approach to work, anchored in how Arab artists can inspire themselves.

“I want to create work that people can live inside of, where they can recognise parts of themselves that perhaps they’ve never been able to name,” she explains. “I want them to walk into it and feel as though their thoughts are being echoed back to them. I just hope for my work to hold that kind of stillness.” Through a multidisciplinary approach, Shamil’s artistry is holistic in its approach and its process, delving into imagination in a way that feels fresh and deeply personal.