Lana Senaoui
director
Senaoui started off on a slightly different career path than film: previously as a creative for BBDO and JWT Cairo, and before that being also a journalist and screenwriter. After graduating she even spent a few years working for both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and Egypt’s leading newspaper, before turning to the advertising world, where she started directing commercials in 2018 when her career was launched by shooting a handful of debut campaigns that went viral.
Working in English, Arabic and French, her rich catalogue of work includes directed commercials for Vodafone, P&G, Benckiser, Reckitt, Orange, Unilever, Kärcher, Lufthansa, Nestle and Clorox, as well as working with many local and regional brands. Her work spans visual storytelling, narrative, fashion, comedy and dialogue – revealing a special talent for dramatic scenes, directing actors and getting extraordinary performances from them, while also being very strong in her sense of visual impact and spectacle.
Heavily influenced by the work of Alex Webb, Philip-Lorca diCorcia and Emmanuel Lubezki, Lana’s distinctive visual approach might be described as “authentically stylized”; a perfect blend of well-planned shots and experimental freestyle camera movement that combine to tell a story from a unique perspective. Her background as an advertising creative director and a journalist comes through in how she can not only interpret a concept visually, but add to it creatively – and through her love of meticulous research.
