Los Angeles • East Bay Area
Samia Zaidi (she/they) is a Pakistani-American director/cinematographer based between the Bay Area and Los Angeles. She is a writer, filmmaker, entrepreneur, and creative producer whose work lives at the intersection of story, technology, and human connection.
Equally comfortable behind a camera, in a writers' room, on a production floor, or soldering together custom lighting systems at two in the morning, Samia approaches every project with uncommon curiosity and an instinct for making complex ideas feel emotionally immediate. Her work spans filmmaking, commercial production, emerging technology, experiential design, and creative strategy, always in service of stories that are deeply human.
Having collaborated on creative development and production workflows for national commercial campaigns, music videos, and feture narratives with Academy Award and Emmy-winning teams, Samia has contributed to creative development and pitch work for Fortune 500 companies, luxury brands, and large-scale artist projects. This experience informs her understanding of scale, collaboration, and high-stakes storytelling, while her directing and cinematography practice remains rooted in independent, author-driven work.
Outside of client work, she is the co-owner of Nova Noir Studio, a movement space built around artistic exploration, and continues to develop original films and art exploring identity, family, belonging, and the strange ways people find one another.