Özgür’s short film Alien (The Other) premieres at the Tribeca Festival.
Alien (The Other) is a short film written by Dasher/filmmaker Özgür Seyben. Özgür’s script was chosen out of a pool of scripts written by Dashers to be produced as part of the Beyond the Dash program and premiered at the Tribeca Festival.
Watch Alien (The Other) here:
DoorDash created Beyond the Dash specifically to help accelerate the dreams of Dashers like Özgür and give them access to resources that would otherwise be out of reach. DoorDash partnered with Tribeca Studios, Chromista, and director Patricia Riggen to bring Alien (The Other) to life. For the months of April-June, Özgür was involved in the entire production process from start to finish. He joined the crew in Los Angeles for a two-day shoot and helped shape the short film he envisioned.
“When I was working a 9 to 5 just to put food on the table, I felt like I was wasting my time, my creativity, my life. I was hoping for some miracle to change the course of my life and I found it with Beyond the Dash,” Özgür reflected.
Özgür is originally from Turkey, where he was a filmmaker and professor of filmmaking. He and his family immigrated to the US in 2017 and settled in Twin Falls, Idaho. Özgür’s passion for filmmaking was put on hold while he worked in a yogurt factory. To supplement his income, Özgür began dashing and loved the freedom and flexibility it gave him.
Despite having to start his life over in a foreign place, Özgür never gave up on his dreams to return to doing what he loved: making films. It always struck Özgür as odd, that he and his family were called “aliens” when they immigrated to the states. They weren’t “aliens,” they were human beings like everyone else, but they were treated as something that was “other.” So Özgür used this as inspiration and wrote a screenplay centered around that theme. “In many ways this story is my story. It’s the story of an alien, written by an alien. I wanted to explore both meanings of that word in one film,” Özgür shared.
Özgür hopes to expand his story and even make a feature length film of Alien (The Other) in the future.
