Ten Years Already

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the debut of my graduation short film, We Once Believed. Seeing the title again, what strikes me most is how much can change in ten years. Back then, I was studying advertising and making films. Later came property sales. Today, most of my attention goes into AI forward deployment. My career has taken a different direction from many of those around me, and certainly from anything I imagined then. When you are busy dealing with what is in front of you, you do not always notice how far you have travelled. Then an old piece of work brings it into focus. Even the way I describe what I do has changed several times.

My first short film "Never Stop" premiered in Clermont-Ferrand, France in 2016.

Looking back, it would be easy to arrange those changes into a coherent career story. Living through them has felt much less clear. As the properties gradually sold, I thought that chapter would close, followed by a different industry or a job somewhere else. Things turned out differently. Some changes came from curiosity. Others meant moving forward with the limited choices available at the time. Even now, there is still a sense of being carried along by circumstances. Somewhere between learning and doing, I became “the AI person” in other people’s eyes, while still getting used to that identity myself.

These unexpected turns have also brought real satisfaction. Learning something unfamiliar, building a system that colleagues actually use, and making their working day a little easier are things I enjoy. I did not expect to take this path, but along the way I have found that I am still interested in plenty of things, and still enjoy the process of gradually getting to grips with something new. Ten years ago, while making We Once Believed, I could hardly have imagined doing this work today. In another ten years, the answer may be different again. Sometimes, what looks like a full stop turns out to be a comma. Returning to the film on its tenth anniversary brings back memories, but it also leaves me curious about what might come next.