Being a child of the chief censor in Abu Dhabi came with significant benefits for Faisal Al Nowais.
Every month, a large box filled with films would arrive at his house for his father's final approval.
"I remember watching a lot of movies that you wouldn't normally see [back then]," says the son of Adulla Al Nowais, a former under-secretary for the Ministry of Information and Culture and the head of television for the emirate.
Hardly surprising, then, that this is how the Faisal, a psychiatrist who has just set up a feature film company with his banker brother Ahmed and a colleague, Sameer Al Obaidli, developed his love of movies.
Their company, Trucial States, hopes to get a slice of the global film industry, which was worth US$36.8 billion (Dh135.17bn) last year and projected to grow to $45.7bn in 2015, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.
"I put a movie on and I saw 'Image Nation Abu Dhabi' and thought, 'Are we making movies now? When did this happen?'" says Dr Al Nowais, 36, an Emirati from Abu Dhabi who spent the early part of his working life in Canada as a resident psychiatrist at McGill University.
"I was very excited and intrigued, but I was like, 'OK, I'm not going to get involved in this,' and I said [that] to my brother, Ahmed, and he was like, 'No, we should,'" he says.
So they did, teaming up three months ago with Dr Al Obaidli, 33, another psychiatrist, to launch the company, based at Abu Dhabi's media centre at twofour54.
"I am very involved in Trucial States. We all are," says Mr Al Nowais. "Unfortunately this is not a job that pays [yet] so we have to keep our day jobs. But a lot of the work is done in the afternoons anyway. [Besides] I love my job [as a psychiatrist] because I get to help people."
The film company, which aims to make small-budget films for US and international audiences, is trying to source funding for two horror movies using a pre-shot trailer.
"The idea is to shoot trailers and you use the trailers for funding and also to get buy-ins from distributors et cetera. That's the premise," says Iain Cooper, a director, or "creative statesman" of Trucial States, as he prefers to be known.
"The first project already has [the] finished trailer shot. There is a shooting script ready to go. Then we have another project where there is a finished trailer and a shooting script ready to go," he adds.
Last year, Dubai's economy received a Dh150 million boost thanks to television shows and commercials being filmed in the emirate.
But the movie industry in the UAE is still at the fledgling stage.
"I think it is important to note that there isn't a film industry here as such," says Brian Shepherd, the managing director of Spitfire, a post-production company set up 10 months ago, which has formed a strategic alliance with Trucial States.
"I think that it is more confined to corporate image films and TV commercials. Hopefully, we can develop that in time and I think that is what Trucial States will look to do," he adds.
Several movies were filmed in the Emirates last year, including supernatural horror film Djinn, the coming-of-age tale Sea Shadow, plus, of course, scenes from Mission: Impossible 4.
And it was Gheorghe Seran's involvement with that Hollywood blockbuster that inspired him to set up his film-extras company, Fame Boulevard.
Mr Seran, 36, a former captain in the Romanian police, moved to Dubai in 2006 and set up a company selling luxury properties.
Finding more time on his hands in the aftermath of the crisis, he started to focus more on his acting hobby, and applied to be an extra in Mission: Impossible.
"We filmed three days on the Palm at Zabeel Saray with Tom Cruise. We were all dressed up like James Bond. It was great," he says.
While on set, Mr Seran chatted with the Hollywood director Brad Bird, who told him that they originally wanted to only cast men over 40 for a party scene but in the end had to settle for whoever they could get.
"The director said [Dubai] was like a playground for him with all the skyline and the light. They really liked it. The only thing he complained about was the talent agencies," says Mr Seran.
In the US it is possible to find almost anyone to be an extra, "including a 75-year-old man with a beard down to the ground", Mr Seran says.
"Here [you cannot] even find a normal guy like in between 20 and 30 who is local," he says.
So Mr Seran decided to set up Fame Boulevard to help production companies find extras. He registered the company on November 11, 2011 - a date he chose because he felt 11/11/11 was auspicious - and has slowly been compiling an internet database of part-time actors. He has about 250 people at the moment and intends to approach film production companies once he has about 1,000 signed up.
And they may be in demand sooner rather than later, according to Mr Shepherd, who has 26 years experience in the film industry here and in London, where he worked for The Mill, which did the computer graphics for Ridley Scott's 2000 blockbuster Gladiator.
"After Mission: Impossible 4 I think you will see an upsurge in film production here because of the city itself, which offers a lot in terms of location," he says.
"Natural growth over time suggests that Hollywood has filmed here, so it is a matter of time before a film production company here makes a film that is comparative to what they do," he adds.
But small companies are not the only organisations working towards the growth of the film industry in the UAE.
The New York Film Academy set up a branch campus in Abu Dhabi in 2008 to encourage the local industry.
Afnan Al Qasemi, 19, from Sharjah, won a scriptwriting competition run by the academy for her script Shaye Karak or "Karak Tea", about crime.
So does this mean the student may consider becoming a scriptwriter full-time?
"If I have what it takes to be a scriptwriter full-time, why not? I love the art of film making and I love writing ... it will be an amazing thing to be part of both," she says.
"Maybe this will be the door to a great future, inshalla," adds Ms Al Qasemi.
But filmmaking was not an option in Abu Dhabi when Mr Al Nowais was choosing his future career.
"I used to be an actor in a children's television series. There was never a moment where I thought, 'This is interesting, I'm going to do something behind the scenes,'" he says.
"It just never felt like it was really a career option for me."
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