Below is an opinion piece from Akbar Hamid, the star and co-producer of Poreless, a short film screening June 7 at the Tribeca Film Festival in NYC. The description: "A fabulous, queer Muslim beauty entrepreneur must figure out how to compete in a Shark Tank-like product pitch contest after suffering an untimely allergic reaction."
I’ve always believed that when you decide something is meant for you — when you commit to it fully — there’s no limit to what’s possible. Some may call it delusion, but I call it vision. And that belief, that so-called delusion, is what carried me to this moment: my very first lead role, my first time producing a film, Poreless — and our premiere at the Tribeca Festival.
I hope my journey reminds people — especially those who have ever felt on the outside — that it can be done. That you can step into a dream, even if it looks nothing like the path you were told to take. If I can do this, then so can you.
My journey to acting didn’t begin on a film set — it started in a living room in Karachi, Pakistan, behind a camcorder, in my mother’s heels and pearls.
Creating and bringing Poreless to life has been a full-circle, soul-deep moment — a reclamation of identity, joy, and voice. For so long, I felt like I lived at the margins — of my culture, my religion, my community. As a queer, Muslim, South Asian kid, I learned early that to survive, I had to hide the parts of me that didn’t fit. I rejected the very identities that shaped me because I believed they had rejected me first.
But healing has a funny way of finding you when you're ready. And this beautiful, absurd comedy — written by Fawzia Mirza and Harris Doran — became that portal. Poreless centers around a queer Muslim beauty founder who’s spent his life hiding himself, only to discover that he was never the problem — not the allergic reaction, not the imperfect skin, not the queerness, not the faith. And in many ways, that’s my story too.
We live in a world that often forgets how to listen — but comedy can cut through the noise. It disarms, it illuminates, and most importantly, it connects. I believe in comedy not just as entertainment, but as a radical tool for truth-telling, for belonging, and for making space where there was once silence.
My love for storytelling was always there, simmering. As a child, I made home movies with my brothers — my middle brother was the director, I was the star. We did our own version of My Fair Lady, and yes, I was Eliza Doolittle. I wore a wig, pearls, and delivered that iconic shoe-throwing scene with Oscar-worthy flair. I starred in school plays from Fantastic Mr. Fox to Puss in Boots — and once, as Snow White. Acting and storytelling lived in my bones.
But growing up as a boy in a conservative South Asian Muslim household, that creative spark was never encouraged. So I buried it — like so many of us do. I poured myself into other kinds of storytelling: building a career in brand marketing, launching global campaigns, and later, even founding a Web3 gaming company aimed at disrupting representation in the metaverse. We made history with the first-ever Metaverse Pride — bringing new narratives and avatars to life for a community that had never seen themselves in that space.
Still, there was a voice inside me saying, you’re not done.
Three years ago, I confided in my friend and mentor, Fawzia Mirza, that I had a dream — to act, to create, to tell stories that could change lives. With her encouragement, and the support of Harris Doran, I quietly began training. I studied, I listened, I learned. And then… they wrote Poreless. [Doran also directed the film.] For me. A gift, a challenge, a calling.
To be able to star in and co-produce a film that is breaking boundaries for queer Muslim representation — and doing it through comedy, not trauma — is one of the greatest honors of my life.
This is the kind of work I want to do. These are the stories I want to tell. Stories that say: You are not broken. You do not have to choose between parts of yourself. You are allowed to take up space, to be absurd, to be joyful, to be seen.
And above all, you are already enough — allergic reaction, flawed skin, and all.
Watch a clip from Poreless below.
