ABOUT SARA

Sara is an Academy Award nominated Yemeni-Scottish film director, screenwriter and trainer who was born in Scotland, grew up in Yemen and is currently based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

After graduating from the University of Edinburgh in 2007, Sara quickly began a career in filmmaking through working with international media outlets such as the BBC, Channel 4 and others.

In 2011, Sara filmed her independent debut film Karama Has No Walls (2012), which went on to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject) and a BAFTA Scotland New Talent Award.

In 2012, Sara graduated from the Edinburgh College of Art (UoE) with an MFA in Film Directing, and soon after released her award-winning personal feature documentary The Mulberry House, which premiered at the International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam (IDFA), screened theatrically in Austria and aired on Al-Jazeera English.  

In 2015, Sara began teaching filmmaking in Yemen in the wake of the current war and later co-founded Comra, a Yemen-based film foundation and academy from which some of Yemen’s most exciting new talent has emerged.

Over the years, Sara has chaired multiple jury committees at film festivals and film funds such as the International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam (IDFA), BFI London Film Awards, BBC Aan Korb Arab Film Festival, Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, (AFAC), IDFA Bertha Fund, MOOOV Film Festival, DoxBox and others. 

Currently, she is the Program Manager at the International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk (founded by IDFA, IFFR and the European Film Academy). She is also working on her first Fiction Feature, 'The Station', which was selected for L’Atelier de la Cinéfondation Festival de Cannes 2020.