Sara Ishaq

Sara Ishaq is a Scottish-Yemeni film maker. Ishaq was born on 29 May 1984 in Edinburgh, before moving back to Yemen at the age of two. She grew up in Sana’a, Yemen until the age of 17. She returned to Edinburgh to complete her education, only to return to Yemen a decade later and produce the critically acclaimed film Karama Has No Walls (2012). The short film was nominated for the BAFTA Scotland New Talents, One World Media awards and for an Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject). In 2013, she completed her first feature film The Mulberry House, which deals with her relationship with her Yemeni family against the backdrop of the country’s 2011 revolution.

Sara Ishaq attended Yemen Modern School (YMS) until the summer of 2001. At the age of 17, she continued her education at Linlithgow Academy in Scotland for a year of high school (2001-2002) before her higher education. Ishaq then joined University of Edinburgh in 2003, where she obtained her MA (Honours) in Humanities and Social Sciences, with a focus on religious studies, social and political theory, International & Human Rights Law & Modern Middle Eastern Studies in 2007.

She returned to academia in 2010 to pursue an MFA in Film Directing from Edinburgh College of Art that she finished in 2012.

In 2011, Ishaq co-founded the #SupportYemen 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. At the headquarters in 2015, Ishaq co-devised and taught a two-week documentary-making film course called "Comra". Comra was targeted at young Yemini aspiring filmmakers. Adjacently, there was a 4-day Arts & Crafts workshop called 'Out of the Rubble' for children that had survived airstrikes.

Between 2012 – 2013, Sara Ishaq was a member of the interventions team with OpAntiSh (Operations Anti Sexual Harassment), an effort to patrol the protests at Tahrir Square against organized sexual assaults on women.

Her earliest and most prolonged 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 and banned for another 5 years.

The Mulberry House (2013)

• IDFA BERTHA Fund
• AFAC Crossroads Fund
• Jury Prize at This Human World Film Festival in Vienna
• Audience Favourite Award at Berwick Film Festival UK

Karama Has No Walls (2012)

• Nominations for Academy Award for Best Short Film 2014,
• One World Media Award 2013
• BAFTA Scotland New Talents Award 2012
• Winner of 5 International Film Awards including Al-Jazeera TV Documentary Award & United Nations Association Film Festival Award