Where My Stories Come From: A Conversation with Sahraa Karimi

Sahraa Karimi is an award-winning Afghan-Slovak film director, screenwriter, and university lecturer whose work focuses on women’s rights and social justice. She earned her Doctorate in Film Studies from the Film and Television Faculty of the Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Bratislava, Slovakia. Karimi is best known for her feature film Hava, Maryam, Ayesha, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival and was selected as Afghanistan’s official submission to the Academy Awards. She also served as the first female chairperson of Afghan Film, the country’s national film organization. Following the return of the Taliban to power in 2021, Karimi was forced into exile and has continued her creative and academic work internationally. She is currently developing her next feature film, Flight from Kabul, an international co-production involving the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Italy, Finland, and Germany. Sahraa is currently a lecturer in Film and Media Studies at Yale University.

 

She reflected on the personal, political, and emotional origins of her films. She will also discuss how real encounters, social realities, and historical turning points shape her characters and narratives, and how she navigates the space between autobiography and fiction, an approach that reflects history and lived events, and can serve as an important form of testimony.