Edition 2015

The Mulberry House

Sara was born in Yemen 30 years ago, the daughter of a Yemeni father and a Scottish mother. As a teenager she began to feel increasingly ill at ease with her surroundings and at 17 she decided to leave for Scotland to live with her mother. Her father only let her go on one condition: that she would not renounce her roots. Sara promised, but in the end she broke her promise.
Ten years later, in 2011, Sara returns to Yemen a different person. She is determined to face her past and willing to rediscover her native roots.
Unexpectedly, she finds a country on the brink of revolution.

Theme:

Human rightsWomen

Sara Ishaq

Sara has worked extensively as a director, researcher, local producer for international TV outlets such as the BBC, Channel 4 and AJ since she graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 2007.

While pursuing an MFA in Film Directing at the Edinburgh College of Art in 2011, Sara returned home to Yemen to document the country’s ‘Arab Spring’ as a BBC camerawoman. On the side, she filmed her award-winning independent debut film Karama Has No Walls (2012), which was nominated for a BAFTA Scotland New Talent Award and an Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject). In 2013, her award-winning personal feature doc The Mulberry House, premiered at the International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam (IDFA), and was later released theatrically in Austria and aired on Al-Jazeera English.

In 2017, Sara co-founded Comra Films, a Yemen-based film foundation for creative film productions and training. Over the years, she has sat on a number of film jury committees such as BFI London Film Awards, BBC Aan Korb Film Festival, IDFA Bertha Fund, MOOOV Film Festival and others.

She is now developing her first Fiction Feature, ‘The Station’, which was selected for L’Atelier de la Cinéfondation Festival de Cannes 2020.

sara_ishaq_bin

Technical details

Year:

2013

Credits

Direction
Sara Ishaq
Executive Production
Diana El Jeiroudi
Sound
Sara Ishaq
Distribution
Proaction Film GmbH / DocsBarcelona Distribution
Co-production
Proaction Film, Seen Films, Setara Films, Dubai Film Market / Enjaaz Film Fund
Screenplay
Sara Ishaq
Cinematography
Sara Ishaq
Editing
Doaa Fadel, Sara Ishaq
Music
Ahmed Al-Shaiba

Screening times

Awards