Welcome to Thee World of
Thee Kariavalista…
Thee Kariavalista
Screenwriter
Thee Kariavalista is the pen name of a Syrian queer screenwriter based in Europe.
For years, he joked that his life could be a television series. Eventually, the joke became a question: What if he actually wrote it?
So he did.
Writing began as a way of making sense of the things he had lived through and quickly became something more. He found himself drawn to the moments people rarely admit to: the terrible decision that made perfect sense at the time, the secret kept for too long, the joke told at exactly the wrong moment, and the person we become when nobody else is in the room.
At the heart of his work is a desire to make space for Arab, queer and Muslim characters who are allowed to be fully human. Not symbols. Not lessons. Not tragedies designed for someone else’s understanding.
His characters are not interesting because they are queer, Arab or Muslim.
THE STORIES
Thee Kariavalista writes character-driven television rooted in lived experience, moving between psychological drama and dark comedy.
He likes characters who make questionable choices for painfully understandable reasons. Characters who can make you laugh in one scene and leave you furious with them in the next. He is less interested in deciding who is good or bad than in asking the more dangerous question:
What would you have done?
Because the most compelling stories rarely have heroes and villains.
They have people.
And people are considerably messier.
THE NAME
And Thee Kariavalista?
It’s a pen name for a reason.
For now, the person behind it prefers to remain behind the work.
He is, however, an Aries.
Which may explain a few things.
Shadows in Room 109
Psychological Drama · Television Series
Shadows in Room 109 is Thee Kariavalista’s first work for the screen, based on events from his own life.
The series follows Kassem, a young Syrian man in Britain whose carefully constructed private life begins to unravel after an encounter takes him from the safety of a screen to Room 109 of a hotel.
What happens there is only the beginning.
As the consequences follow Kassem beyond the room, the series moves between the shadows of his past and the uncertainty of his present, as buried memories resurface, old wounds take new forms, and the life he has built begins to collide with the life he thought he had left behind.
At times disturbing, at times painfully funny, Shadows in Room 109 asks what happens after the moment you wish you could undo and how far one decision can travel through a life.
WATCH THE TEASER
Written, directed, edited and produced by Thee Kariavalista.
Visual sequences created with generative AI under the creative direction of Thee Kariavalista.
© 2026 Thee Kariavalista. All rights reserved.
Shadows in Room 109, including its original screenplay, characters, characterizations, dialogue, story elements and other original authored materials, is the work of Thee Kariavalista. No such materials may be reproduced, adapted, distributed or otherwise used without prior written permission.
CONTACT
INFO@THEEKARIAVALISTA.EU