Sahar al-Sawaf
- Director
- Writer
- Animation Department
Sahar al-Sawaf is an Iraqi filmmaker and storyteller who was born in Saudi Arabia, grew up in Lebanon and Iraq, then escaped to California as a child, days before the Gulf War. Working in documentary and animation, she has traveled extensively throughout the Middle East with her sketchbook and camera in hand, chronicling the plight of refugees who have fled. Her films have screened at DOC NYC, Chicago International Film Festival, Arab Film Festival, Animafest Zagreb, Tricky Women and The Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences. She is a 2018 Emerging Artist Fellow at the Jacob Burns Film Center and a recipient of the 2021 NYSCA / NYFA Artist Fellowship in Video/Film. Sahar was a Jules Engel Endowed Scholar in Experimental Animation at CalArts where she graduated with her MFA in Film/Video. Based in New York, she is presently directing her first feature length film called "Tigris" that explores the trauma of family lost in wartime, set in a desolate, ruined landscape of a future Iraq.