Sara Ishaq is a Yemeni-Scottish film director. Ishaq directed and produced the critically acclaimed film Karama Has No Walls (2012).[1] The short film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject) and BAFTA Scotland New Talents award. In 2013, her award-winning feature film The Mulberry House,[2] which deals with her relationship with her family against the backdrop of the 2011 Yemeni uprising, premiered at IDFA.[3]
Sara Ishaq attended Yemen Modern School until graduation and Linlithgow Academy in Scotland for a year of high school. Ishaq attended University of Edinburgh in 2003, where she obtained an MA (Honours) in Humanities and Social Sciences, with a focus on religious studies, International & Human Rights Law & Modern Middle Eastern Studies in 2007. In 2010, she pursue a MFA in Film Directing at the Edinburgh College of Art, graduating in 2012.
In 2011, Ishaq co-founded the #SupportYemen[4] Media Collective, an organizing and strategizing effort to advance social justice, build a democratic civic state, promote non-violence and break the silence on human rights violations in Yemen. In 2017, Ishaq co-founded Comra - a film production company and academy for film training in Sana'a. In 2022, she joined the International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk, which based in Amsterdam, to support filmmakers at risk internationally.
Her earliest humanitarian pursuit occurred between 2009 and 2016, teaching rehabilitative yoga classes at the Nablus Women's Centre while volunteering with Project Hope (Palestine), as well as various studios across Cairo (Egypt), focusing on women suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In 2015 Ishaq was barred from entering Palestine to participate in the Palestine Festival of Literature. [5][6] Sara also ran Arts & Crafts workshops for children that had survived airstrikes in Yemen after the onslaught of the 2015 war.[7]
The Mulberry House (2013)
Karama Has No Walls (2012)
Television credits
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