Zain Alayyan

2026

About the Film
Marketing
Research
CV

About the Film

A Documentary on Identity, Memory & Belonging

The Film
To carry a culture is to carry a home you cannot always return to.

Through intimate interviews, observational footage, and personal reflection, this documentary explores the realities of living between cultures. Examining the experiences of international students and diaspora communities, the film reflects on memory, belonging, and the everyday acts through which culture survives across borders.

Shot across Canterbury and Jordan, the film moves between landscapes — the Dead Sea at dusk, student kitchens, family photographs, shared meals — tracing the invisible threads that connect people to places they have left behind.

This is a film about what we carry. About the weight of belonging. About the quiet, persistent work of remaining whole in a world that asks you to choose.

Themes
Identity Memory Distance
Watch the Film Open the full documentary film
YouTube link — opens in a new tab
Film Stills
Dead Sea, Jordan

Dead Sea, Jordan

Morning Rituals

Morning Rituals

Chapter IV

Chapter IV — We Are Still Here

Canterbury, 2024

Canterbury, 2024

Jordan, Dusk

Jordan, Dusk

Market Life

Market Life

Home Kitchen, Canterbury

The Making Of

Observational Filmmaking

The film adopts a fly-on-the-wall approach that allows subjects to exist naturally within the frame. No narration is imposed. The camera becomes a silent witness — patient, unhurried, present.

Archival Aesthetics

Visual choices throughout — grain, warmth, overexposure at the edges — treat contemporary footage as if it were already memory. The things we film today will be the things we remember tomorrow.

Chapter Structure

The film is organised into four chapters: arrival, daily life, longing, and return. This episodic structure resists the pull of conventional narrative resolution. There is no tidy ending — only the ongoing work of living between worlds.

Personal Storytelling

The director's own experience as someone who has lived between cultures shapes every editorial decision: which silences to hold, which moments to cut before they resolve, which images carry more meaning than any caption could give them.

The Film
Watch on YouTube
DirectorZain Alayyan
ProgrammeAdvanced Media Practice
InstitutionUniversity of Kent
Year2024–2026
RuntimeTBC
FormatSingle-channel HD
Documentary Proposal — Beyond the Lies

Beyond
The Lies

In Development

Advanced Media Practice — Proposed Solo Moving-Image Project

A proposed 8–10 minute political essay film examining the glorification of the United States within Western media culture, and its costs on the representation of the Middle East and Arab diaspora. What follows documents the critical thinking, research framework, and intended production decisions developed for this project.

Proposal — Log Line

This project depicts the long Arabian traditions, literature, poetry, and artistic expression as a means of resistance against Western colonialism and imperial power — exploring the importance of preserving personal narratives and perspective rather than yielding to the glorified narratives of the West.

Film Structure — Three Chapters
Chapter I

The Glorification

Establishing the dominance of American ideals within Western media. The construction of the US as a moral and cultural authority — and the representational hierarchy that results.

Chapter II

The Margin

The lived consequences. How these representational systems distort identity, aspiration, and belonging for Arab diaspora communities — especially within Western educational institutions.

Chapter III

The Counter

Diaspora reframed — not as alienation but as dynamic resistance. Archival imagery, poetry, and personal testimony as political tools that challenge and reclaim narrative.

Context & Theory
Edward Said — Orientalism (1978)

Representation as a site of power rather than neutral reflection. The Middle East constructed through a Western lens — reducing complexity and reinforcing stereotypes that persist in contemporary media.

Stuart Hall — Encoding/Decoding (1980)

Meaning produced through active representations, not passive reflections. The dominant codes embedded in Western media culture — and how they can be read against the grain.

Avtar Brah — Cartographies of Diaspora (1996)

Diaspora not as fixed alienation but as a living, evolving condition. Identity shaped through movement, memory, and inherited histories — a framework for the film's counter-narrative structure.

Filmic Influences
5 Broken Cameras
Dir. Emad Burnat — 2011

First-person documentary as political testimony. The camera as both witness and weapon. Would influence the film's insistence on authentic, unmediated voice over authoritative narration.

Letter from Siberia / La Jetée
Dir. Chris Marker — 1958 / 1962

The essay film tradition — subjectivity, fragmentation, and emotional memory as legitimate forms of knowledge production. Resisting the objectivity of conventional documentary.

Creative Approach
Essay Film Form

Deliberately resists the Western authoritative voice embedded in traditional documentary. Subjectivity and contradiction positioned as legitimate means of producing knowledge.

Archival Imagery

Historical photographs and footage layered with contemporary testimony — treating the archive not as evidence but as emotional and political material that disrupts linear narrative.

No Omniscient Narrator

The absence of a controlling narrator would keep raw, authentic voice at the foreground — pushing the viewer beyond passive consumption toward active interpretation.

Positional Reflexivity

The proposed director's own Arab diaspora identity — raised between Jordan and the UK, navigating Western institutions — would inform every creative and ethical decision in the work.

Core Argument

"This proposed project intends to question the dominance of American media culture not as confrontation — rather as an ideological challenge within the landscapes of today's media practices."

8–10
Minute runtime
3
Chapters
Solo
Proposed project
2026
University of Kent

Nike × UFC — Case Study

Nike
Fight Club

Product Design · Brand Strategy · UX/UI · 2026

01 — Project Overview

The problem with fitness apps is they give you workouts.
Not identity.

Most performance platforms stop at the physical. Nike Fight Club is a concept platform that goes further — combining athletic training with cultural identity, mindset, and community. Inspired by UFC Welterweight Champion Belal Muhammad.

40K
Target installs, month one
8%
Week-2 retention target
≥42
NPS target score
7
Core platform features
02 — Brand Strategy

Nike Training Club × UFC × Duolingo × Strava

One platform that combines the best progression mechanics from the most addictive apps on the market — wrapped in Nike's editorial aesthetic and Belal Muhammad's authentic story.

Positioning

"The platform for athletes who train with purpose, not just performance."

Audience

18–34 year olds. Culturally engaged. Fitness-forward. Inspired by athletes who represent more than sport. Underserved by existing apps that ignore identity.

The Athlete

Belal Muhammad — UFC Welterweight Champion. Palestinian-American. A fighter whose journey of discipline, resilience, and identity resonates far beyond sport.

03 — Core Features
01 Journey Mode

Documentary Experience

Interactive timeline of Belal's career. Users unlock UFC milestones, training camps, interviews, and mindset reflections as they progress. Think Masterclass meets Strava.

02 Train Like Belal

Personalised Programs

Four tiers: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Elite. Each includes strength, conditioning, mobility, and recovery. Progressive difficulty. Built around real camp schedules.

03 Daily Discipline

Mature Gamification

Duolingo-inspired streaks and consistency tracking — but designed to feel serious, not playful. Accountability without infantilising the user.

04 Mindset Library

Identity & Culture

Short videos, audio reflections, quotes. Discipline. Identity. Pressure. Confidence. Failure. Resilience. The things fitness apps never talk about.

05 Nike Performance Lab

Product Integration

Gear exploration, athlete recommendations, performance benefits. Designed to feel like Apple product pages — not an online shop.

06 AR Experience

Future-Facing Concept

Point your camera. Belal appears as trainer, guide, coach. Concept screens showing the vision — the technology follows the idea.

04 — Launch Campaign

Not For
Comfort.

The campaign doesn't ask you to be better. It assumes you already are. Three phases built around emotional tension — the same structure that made Nike's most iconic campaigns work.

01
Build Tension

Teaser content. No product. No logo. Only a question: What are you training for? Silence creates intrigue before identity.

02
The Reveal

Brand introduced through Belal's story, not product features. Documentary-style. Raw. First-person address. The aesthetic inherits the grammar of intimacy.

03
Ignition

Full launch. In-app, social, OOH. Community challenges. The campaign doesn't end at download — it converts users into the culture.

05 — Design System
Primary
#111111
Secondary
#F5F5F0
Accent
#0F5D2F
Highlight
#D62828
Nike Fight Club
Performance · Identity · Community
Start Training Learn More
Portfolio Context

"This project demonstrates the ability to take a university assignment and rebuild it as a credible, pitch-ready product concept."

Nike Fight Club began as an Advanced Media Practice assignment. What you see here is its second life — rebuilt from scratch as a full product design case study showing strategy, UX thinking, brand vision, and campaign development. Every section was designed to sit beside work from Nike, Apple, and Gymshark product teams.

Zain
Alayyan

Media Student & Filmmaker
England, United Kingdom
+44 7747 442 694
zainalayyan@gmail.com
linkedin.com/in/zainalayyan
Profile

Media student at the University of Kent with experience in digital marketing, editorial work, and customer-facing environments. Skilled in social media campaigns, creative media production, and marketing research. Fluent in Arabic and English with strong communication, organisation, and creative problem-solving skills.

Professional Experience
Digital Marketing InternJul — Aug 2024
Wunderman — Amman
  • Assisted with planning and execution of digital marketing campaigns
  • Conducted market and competitor research
  • Created content for social media and digital platforms
  • Collaborated with team members on campaign strategy
Digital Marketing & Media InternJul — Aug 2022
Joos — Amman
  • Worked on digital marketing campaigns including projects for Kia Jordan
  • Created visual assets using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator
  • Coordinated project timelines using ClickUp
Junior Editor InternJun — Aug 2021
Jordan News — Amman
  • Assisted with newspaper editorial production including columns and reviews
  • Supported social media campaigns and monitored engagement metrics
  • Observed newsroom workflows and publishing processes
Retail & Marketing PlacementAmman
Joe Bedou Store
  • Assisted with customer service and retail operations
  • Observed brand marketing and visual merchandising strategies
Leadership & Achievements
Lead Ambassador
Jordan's First GirlUp Club
Founder
TeamRakan Annual Toy Drive
Established Regional Initiative
GivingTuesdayKids Middle East — in collaboration with the Jordanian Basketball Federation
Zain Alayyan — 2026

Zain Alayyan

2026

About the Film
Marketing
CV

About the Film

A Documentary on Identity, Memory & Belonging

The Film
To carry a culture is to carry a home you cannot always return to.

Through intimate interviews, observational footage, and personal reflection, this documentary explores the realities of living between cultures. Examining the experiences of international students and diaspora communities, the film reflects on memory, belonging, and the everyday acts through which culture survives across borders.

Shot across Canterbury and Jordan, the film moves between landscapes — the Dead Sea at dusk, student kitchens, family photographs, shared meals — tracing the invisible threads that connect people to places they have left behind.

This is a film about what we carry. About the weight of belonging. About the quiet, persistent work of remaining whole in a world that asks you to choose.

Themes
Identity Memory Distance
Watch the Film Open the full documentary film
YouTube link — opens in a new tab
Film Stills
Dead Sea, Jordan

Dead Sea, Jordan

Morning Rituals

Morning Rituals

Chapter IV

Chapter IV — We Are Still Here

Canterbury, 2024

Canterbury, 2024

Jordan, Dusk

Jordan, Dusk

Market Life

Market Life

Home Kitchen, Canterbury

The Making Of

Observational Filmmaking

The film adopts a fly-on-the-wall approach that allows subjects to exist naturally within the frame. No narration is imposed. The camera becomes a silent witness — patient, unhurried, present.

Archival Aesthetics

Visual choices throughout — grain, warmth, overexposure at the edges — treat contemporary footage as if it were already memory. The things we film today will be the things we remember tomorrow.

Chapter Structure

The film is organised into four chapters: arrival, daily life, longing, and return. This episodic structure resists the pull of conventional narrative resolution. There is no tidy ending — only the ongoing work of living between worlds.

Personal Storytelling

The director's own experience as someone who has lived between cultures shapes every editorial decision: which silences to hold, which moments to cut before they resolve, which images carry more meaning than any caption could give them.

The Film
Watch on YouTube
DirectorZain Alayyan
ProgrammeAdvanced Media Practice
InstitutionUniversity of Kent
Year2024–2026
RuntimeTBC
FormatSingle-channel HD
Documentary Proposal — Beyond the Lies

Beyond
The Lies

In Development

Advanced Media Practice — Proposed Solo Moving-Image Project

A proposed 8–10 minute political essay film examining the glorification of the United States within Western media culture, and its costs on the representation of the Middle East and Arab diaspora. What follows documents the critical thinking, research framework, and intended production decisions developed for this project.

Proposal — Log Line

This project depicts the long Arabian traditions, literature, poetry, and artistic expression as a means of resistance against Western colonialism and imperial power — exploring the importance of preserving personal narratives and perspective rather than yielding to the glorified narratives of the West.

Film Structure — Three Chapters
Chapter I

The Glorification

Establishing the dominance of American ideals within Western media. The construction of the US as a moral and cultural authority — and the representational hierarchy that results.

Chapter II

The Margin

The lived consequences. How these representational systems distort identity, aspiration, and belonging for Arab diaspora communities — especially within Western educational institutions.

Chapter III

The Counter

Diaspora reframed — not as alienation but as dynamic resistance. Archival imagery, poetry, and personal testimony as political tools that challenge and reclaim narrative.

Context & Theory
Edward Said — Orientalism (1978)

Representation as a site of power rather than neutral reflection. The Middle East constructed through a Western lens — reducing complexity and reinforcing stereotypes that persist in contemporary media.

Stuart Hall — Encoding/Decoding (1980)

Meaning produced through active representations, not passive reflections. The dominant codes embedded in Western media culture — and how they can be read against the grain.

Avtar Brah — Cartographies of Diaspora (1996)

Diaspora not as fixed alienation but as a living, evolving condition. Identity shaped through movement, memory, and inherited histories — a framework for the film's counter-narrative structure.

Filmic Influences
5 Broken Cameras
Dir. Emad Burnat — 2011

First-person documentary as political testimony. The camera as both witness and weapon. Would influence the film's insistence on authentic, unmediated voice over authoritative narration.

Letter from Siberia / La Jetée
Dir. Chris Marker — 1958 / 1962

The essay film tradition — subjectivity, fragmentation, and emotional memory as legitimate forms of knowledge production. Resisting the objectivity of conventional documentary.

Creative Approach
Essay Film Form

Deliberately resists the Western authoritative voice embedded in traditional documentary. Subjectivity and contradiction positioned as legitimate means of producing knowledge.

Archival Imagery

Historical photographs and footage layered with contemporary testimony — treating the archive not as evidence but as emotional and political material that disrupts linear narrative.

No Omniscient Narrator

The absence of a controlling narrator would keep raw, authentic voice at the foreground — pushing the viewer beyond passive consumption toward active interpretation.

Positional Reflexivity

The proposed director's own Arab diaspora identity — raised between Jordan and the UK, navigating Western institutions — would inform every creative and ethical decision in the work.

Core Argument

"This proposed project intends to question the dominance of American media culture not as confrontation — rather as an ideological challenge within the landscapes of today's media practices."

8–10
Minute runtime
3
Chapters
Solo
Proposed project
2026
University of Kent

Nike × UFC — Case Study

Nike
Fight Club

Product Design · Brand Strategy · UX/UI · 2026

01 — Project Overview

The problem with fitness apps is they give you workouts.
Not identity.

Most performance platforms stop at the physical. Nike Fight Club is a concept platform that goes further — combining athletic training with cultural identity, mindset, and community. Inspired by UFC Welterweight Champion Belal Muhammad.

40K
Target installs, month one
8%
Week-2 retention target
≥42
NPS target score
7
Core platform features
02 — Brand Strategy

Nike Training Club × UFC × Duolingo × Strava

One platform that combines the best progression mechanics from the most addictive apps on the market — wrapped in Nike's editorial aesthetic and Belal Muhammad's authentic story.

Positioning

"The platform for athletes who train with purpose, not just performance."

Audience

18–34 year olds. Culturally engaged. Fitness-forward. Inspired by athletes who represent more than sport. Underserved by existing apps that ignore identity.

The Athlete

Belal Muhammad — UFC Welterweight Champion. Palestinian-American. A fighter whose journey of discipline, resilience, and identity resonates far beyond sport.

03 — Core Features
01 Journey Mode

Documentary Experience

Interactive timeline of Belal's career. Users unlock UFC milestones, training camps, interviews, and mindset reflections as they progress. Think Masterclass meets Strava.

02 Train Like Belal

Personalised Programs

Four tiers: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Elite. Each includes strength, conditioning, mobility, and recovery. Progressive difficulty. Built around real camp schedules.

03 Daily Discipline

Mature Gamification

Duolingo-inspired streaks and consistency tracking — but designed to feel serious, not playful. Accountability without infantilising the user.

04 Mindset Library

Identity & Culture

Short videos, audio reflections, quotes. Discipline. Identity. Pressure. Confidence. Failure. Resilience. The things fitness apps never talk about.

05 Nike Performance Lab

Product Integration

Gear exploration, athlete recommendations, performance benefits. Designed to feel like Apple product pages — not an online shop.

06 AR Experience

Future-Facing Concept

Point your camera. Belal appears as trainer, guide, coach. Concept screens showing the vision — the technology follows the idea.

04 — Launch Campaign

Not For
Comfort.

The campaign doesn't ask you to be better. It assumes you already are. Three phases built around emotional tension — the same structure that made Nike's most iconic campaigns work.

01
Build Tension

Teaser content. No product. No logo. Only a question: What are you training for? Silence creates intrigue before identity.

02
The Reveal

Brand introduced through Belal's story, not product features. Documentary-style. Raw. First-person address. The aesthetic inherits the grammar of intimacy.

03
Ignition

Full launch. In-app, social, OOH. Community challenges. The campaign doesn't end at download — it converts users into the culture.

05 — Design System
Primary
#111111
Secondary
#F5F5F0
Accent
#0F5D2F
Highlight
#D62828
Nike Fight Club
Performance · Identity · Community
Start Training Learn More
Portfolio Context

"This project demonstrates the ability to take a university assignment and rebuild it as a credible, pitch-ready product concept."

Nike Fight Club began as an Advanced Media Practice assignment. What you see here is its second life — rebuilt from scratch as a full product design case study showing strategy, UX thinking, brand vision, and campaign development. Every section was designed to sit beside work from Nike, Apple, and Gymshark product teams.

Zain
Alayyan

Media Student & Filmmaker
England, United Kingdom
+44 7747 442 694
zainalayyan@gmail.com
linkedin.com/in/zainalayyan
Profile

Media student at the University of Kent with experience in digital marketing, editorial work, and customer-facing environments. Skilled in social media campaigns, creative media production, and marketing research. Fluent in Arabic and English with strong communication, organisation, and creative problem-solving skills.

Professional Experience
Digital Marketing InternJul — Aug 2024
Wunderman — Amman
  • Assisted with planning and execution of digital marketing campaigns
  • Conducted market and competitor research
  • Created content for social media and digital platforms
  • Collaborated with team members on campaign strategy
Digital Marketing & Media InternJul — Aug 2022
Joos — Amman
  • Worked on digital marketing campaigns including projects for Kia Jordan
  • Created visual assets using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator
  • Coordinated project timelines using ClickUp
Junior Editor InternJun — Aug 2021
Jordan News — Amman
  • Assisted with newspaper editorial production including columns and reviews
  • Supported social media campaigns and monitored engagement metrics
  • Observed newsroom workflows and publishing processes
Retail & Marketing PlacementAmman
Joe Bedou Store
  • Assisted with customer service and retail operations
  • Observed brand marketing and visual merchandising strategies
Leadership & Achievements
Lead Ambassador
Jordan's First GirlUp Club
Founder
TeamRakan Annual Toy Drive
Established Regional Initiative
GivingTuesdayKids Middle East — in collaboration with the Jordanian Basketball Federation