Former director of the Arab Film Festival, Cinemayaat, in San Francisco from 1998 to 2002, he has curated Arab films for a range of institutions and has collaborated with various cinémathèques. He produced and directed his first feature documentary, The White Thread, in 2006 and ran the documentary section of the Casablanca International Film Festival in 2007. Khalil moved to Doha, Qatar in early 2008 to produce films for Al Jazeera Children’s Channel until the end of 2010 and currently heads the grant unit of the Film Financing Department at the Doha Film Institute.