From Al-Balad, to the whole country
Our name comes from Al-Balad, the historic heart of Jeddah. And "Bytes" are the small pieces we use to rebuild what the camera never kept.
Saudi Arabia has many stories that reached us incomplete. A single photograph from 1911, with no idea of what came before or after it. Dinosaur bones in the north-west of the Kingdom, and no picture of the animal that left them. An Arabian leopard living in our mountains that most of us have never seen.
Balad Bytes is a Saudi studio whose mission is to fill that gap with images, not guesses. We start from the source before the scene: an archive photograph, a published research paper, or an official account. Then we build on it, and tell the viewer clearly where documentation ends and reconstruction begins.
We work with AI because it is the only camera that can enter a time that has passed. But for us it is a filming tool, not a decision maker: the story, the research, the edit and the judgement of what is fit to show are all human.
How we work
- Some of our music is recorded with an oud player, and some is licensed.
- We film with a cinema camera what is faster to shoot than to generate, and generate what no camera can reach.
- Every factual work is reviewed by a specialist before it is published.
Our works
Our work moves between documentary, fantasy, anime, comedy and children's programmes, and one question connects it all: what would have been seen if someone had stood there with a camera? See our works
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