Stars of Tomorrow 2025: Sami Ibrahim (writer)

Identity informs Sami Ibrahim’s writing. This includes The Muscles, his debut feature screenplay about a white celebrity impersonator who kills a muscular action star – a person of colour who passes for white – then must pretend to be him amid an awards campaign.

South Londoner Ibrahim, whose father is Palestinian, is interested in “how other people look at you – how someone who reads my work will get a different perception from someone who walks past me in the street”.

The Muscles was developed with Past Lives and Babygirl producers 2am, and a completed script is now out to directors. Other projects include Harraga, about a Moroccan immigrant delivery driver who accidentally becomes the getaway driver in a jewellery heist. Co-written with director Nez Khammal and backed by Film4, it will be produced by Hera Pictures (Hamnet). He also has TV series Studio Forster with Range Media and Ari Aster’s Square Peg, a fashion industry satire about employees fighting for control of their brand after the company founder dies.

Ibrahim honed his writing on plays while studying history at Oxford University, finding “there was always money around to put on a play quickly”. His stage work includes A Sudden Violent Burst Of Rain, which ran at Edinburgh Fringe and London’s Gate Theatre, and he has been a writer-in-residence at Shakespeare’s Globe.

Ibrahim “thinks in terms of images” when writing plays, so “it felt natural moving to film”. He has ambitions to direct, but also values the relationship between writer and director. “The most satisfying part is when I see what a director has done to something I’ve written.”

Contact: Jessica Stewart, Independent Talent

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