Roya Sadat
Roya Sadat | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1981 Herat, Afghanistan |
| Occupation(s) | Film producer and director |
| Known for | Movies Three Dots and Osama, TV show Secrets of This House, and establishing Roya Film House |
Roya Sadat (born 1981) is an Afghan film producer and director. She was the first woman director in the history of Afghan cinema in the post-Taliban era who ventured into making feature films and documentaries on the theme of injustice and restrictions imposed on women. Following the fall of the Taliban regime in the country, she made her debut feature film "Three Dots" which won the highest award at the Afghan Film Festival.[1][2][3] In 2003, she and her sister Alka Sadat established the Roya Film House and under this banner produced more than 30 documentaries and feature films and won several awards.[3][4] She is now involved in producing a television series titled Bahasht Khamosh.[5]
Biography
Roya Sadat was born in Herat, Afghanistan [2] in 1981, at the time of the Russian war.[6] She studied law and political science at the Herat University.[4] When she was very young, at the time the Taliban ruled in Afghanistan, women's education was a taboo. Then she and her five sisters were educated at home by her mother.[7][3] She was an autodidact who educated herself by reading books authored by Syd Field in Farsi translated versions.[2] She was very passionate about producing films. But considering restrictive atmosphere during the Taliban regime in her country she started writing scripts for plays and movies.[4] In 1999, even during the Taliban regime, she wrote and directed a play for a theater show for a group of Afghan women.[5] After the Taliban regime came to an end, she started making films and her first feature film as a producer and director was Three Dots, known in Afghanistan as Se noughta,[4][2] or Ellipsis. She made this film in less than two weeks, in a digital video format. The film, though not a quality product, still gave an exposure to the western audience on the status of women in Afghanistan.[6] Sadat discovered Gul Afroz for the lead role in this film even though Afroz had no formal training in acting. When Afroz was prevented by her husband and family members to act in the film she threatened to commit suicide, but she eventually acted in the film.[2] This film received wide acclaim around the world.[5] On her film making Sadat said: "In the past, women could not be what they wanted to be, only what men wanted them to be. Afghan women were living dead. I always has hope that change would come one day."[1]
For her documentary titled Osama, which preceded her first feature film, Siddiq Barmak gave her $2000 as payment, and also engaged her to write scripts for two short films and to work on Japanese television.[6]
In 2003, she and her sister Alka Sadat, established the first independent Afghan film company. In 2006, she pursued her studies at the Asian Film Academy in South Korea under a scholarship.[4]
Sadat is also credited with establishing the International Women's Film Festival in Afghanistan in 2013 as co-founder and president.[3][4]
Sadat was one of the jury members at the "Netpac award" for Malayalam films screened by the Malayalam Cinema, in 2014.[3]
References
- ^ a b Liebersohn 2009, p. 68.
- ^ a b c d e Graham 2010, p. 142.
- ^ a b c d e Nagarajan, Saraswathy (17 December 2014). "Voice of the silenced". The Hindu. Retrieved 6 June 2016.
- ^ a b c d e f "Roya Sadat: 'She even changed her name to Sohrab, a boy's name'". Huffington Post. 4 May 2014. Retrieved 6 June 2016.
- ^ a b c "International Jury". Roya Sadat. International Film Festival of Kerala 2015. Retrieved 6 June 2016.
- ^ a b c Graham 2010, p. 133.
- ^ "Alka Sadat". Internet Media Data Base. Retrieved 6 June 2016.
Bibliography
- Graham, Mark A. (2010). Afghanistan in the Cinema. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-03527-2.
{{cite book}}: Invalid|ref=harv(help) - Liebersohn, Aharon (2009). World Wide Agora. Lulu.com. ISBN 978-1-4092-8477-2.
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