If you don’t tell your story, someone else will: Experts

Three leaders from film, architecture and cultural diplomacy convened at the 10th edition of the Xposure International Photography Festival 2026 to discuss how visual storytelling operates as soft power and why global entertainment is increasingly shifting away from long-standing Hollywood dominance.

The “Harnessing Soft Power” panel discussion featured Glenn Gainor, former head of physical production at Amazon MGM Studios, Jordanian producer and green production consultant Bassam Alasad, and Ayten Mirzoyeva of Paris-based Vasconi Architects, who examined the importance of authentic local narratives and the influence of physical and cultural spaces in shaping stories for global audiences.

Gainor, whose 30-year career spans producing hits like Think Like a Man, opened with a frank assessment of how the industry has transformed.

“When I started in the movie business, we were an export business. For over 100 years, Hollywood was exporting soft power, teaching people American values, teaching the world about its culture and history,” Gainor said.

But that era, he argued, is definitively over. “We’re actually importing a lot of culture, and we’re importing stories, and we’re seeing Academy Awards coming from Korea and Brazil,” he said. “I’m in the Academy, and this year I watched 15 of the shortlisted international films, and we had five films coming from this region. That is soft power.”

Gainor pointed to the success of specialty distributors like A24, which has partnered with Qatar Media City, and Amazon filming Jack Ryan in Dubai. “People understand, even from a business point of view, that looking for authentic, very local narratives and letting people own their narratives and tell their stories would also make money.”

Alasad, whose Dubai-based Creative Media Solutions has produced projects across the Middle East, cited the example of Theeb, the 2014 Jordanian film set in the desert during World War I that earned an Oscar nomination.

“The director lived in the desert area for six months with the tribe. Then he scouted the locations, casted local people and their authentic accent and words,” Alasad explained.

The impact was transformative. “It made a huge impact on Jordanian cinema. Hollywood executives started looking into Jordanian talents,” he said. “There’s now an annual familiarisation tour to Jordan with executives, decision makers, and agents to understand the country.”

Architecture as storytelling: Buildings that create emotional engagement

Mirzoyeva, whose firm Vasconi Architects has offices in Paris, Hong Kong, Luxembourg, and Azerbaijan, brought a complementary perspective on how physical spaces function as narrative tools and instruments of cultural diplomacy.

For Mirzoyeva, architecture is also about creating vessels for cultural exchange. “Architecture, like cinema, tells stories. We build shapes and create space in buildings. But first, you have to create emotional engagement with the building.”

Describing her recent work at the Palais Garnier opera house in France, she said: “We’re in the phase of reconstruction of a project in Ukraine - the pride of that country.” The project involves creating synergies between the historic Kyiv opera house and Paris’s Palais Garnier. “We flew the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture to Paris to see how Palais Garnier is a great example for a building with great stories. We want to bring this organic relationship between the two stages,” she said.

The panel repeatedly returned to the idea of representation. Gainor shared a lesson he learned from an Indigenous filmmaker in New Zealand: “If you don’t tell your story, someone else will. And that’s worse, because now they define you.”

Alasad spoke candidly about growing up without seeing himself reflected on screen. “I didn’t feel represented,” he said. “So I asked myself: why don’t we tell the stories we want to see?”