Oman Across the Ages

Land of Oman film

Creative Direction for a Documentary Museum Film in Oman

Two thousand miles. Two seasons. Twenty-two landscapes. One country, in full.

I was Creative Director on Land of Oman, the flagship museum film for the Oman Across the Ages Museum in Muscat. The project was a large-scale documentary film production in Oman, designed as the centrepiece experience for the museum.

Over five weeks, our film crew travelled more than four thousand miles across the country, capturing twenty-two of Oman’s most breathtaking landscapes, from the southern desert to the tip of the Musandam Peninsula. As Creative Director, I oversaw the story, visual approach and production across some of the most remote filming locations in the Middle East.

We filmed everywhere we could reach: camel trains crossing open desert, five-thousand-year-old beehive tombs, mountain treks, wadi walks and underwater caves. We returned twice, once during the monsoon, when the desert turns green and waterfalls appear, and again in the dry season, when the landscape becomes dust and silence.

The production relied on an exceptional local crew of Omani fixers and guides who understood the terrain and made complex remote location filming possible.

Two locations in particular stayed with me. Majlis al Jinn, one of the largest cave chambers on Earth, accessible only by abseil, where we sent a drone team deep into the cavern to capture aerial footage inside the vast space. And the Musandam Peninsula, Oman’s remote exclave on the Strait of Hormuz, where filming permits are notoriously difficult to secure. From there we captured dramatic drone cinematography over fjord-like cliffs while wooden smuggler boats crossed the water toward Iran.

The finished film now plays permanently inside the Oman across the ages museum.

A once-in-a-lifetime shoot.