Sara Ishaq is an Academy Award® & BAFTA nominated Yemeni-Scottish film director, screenwriter and trainer. Born in Scotland and raised in Yemen, she currently lives in Amsterdam while working internationally.

Sara graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 2007 with an MA General (Hons) in Humanities & Social Sciences. After several years of freelancing for TV outlets such as the BBC and working as an Ashtanga Yoga teacher, she pursued an MFA in Film Directing at the Edinburgh College of Art (UoE) in 2010.

In 2011, Sara documented Yemen's Arab Spring uprising for international media and worBBC News, Channel 4, Al-Jazeera and directed two independent films. Her debut short documentary Karama Has No Walls (2012) was nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Documentary Short and a BAFTA Scotland New Talent Award in 2014. In 2013, she released her personal documentary The Mulberry House (2013), which premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) in 2013 and won several international awards and aired on Al Jazeera English

Alongside her own filmmaking, Sara began leading film training workshops in Yemen in the wake of the 2015 war, leading to the creation of Comra, a film academy (2017–2023) that nurtured more than 70 emerging Yemeni filmmakers. Since 2023, she continues to produce films from Yemen through her company Setara Films, while also running independent mentorship programs in the Arab world through Marsa Foundation, which she co-founded in 2020. Between 2022 and 2026, Sara ran the International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk (ICFR) - a non-profit that advocates for filmmakers facing risk worldwide.

Her debut fiction feature The Station premiered at Cannes Semaine de la Critique in 2026, having won the La Biennale di Venezia Prize for Best Film in Post-Production at the Venice Film Festival 2025.

Sara has served as a jury member at leading international film festivals and film funds.