Roya Sadat is Afghanistan’s first female award-winning producer, director and writer. Studied filmmaking at the Asia Film Academy in South Korea, she has successfully brought touching stories about Afghan women to international film festivals in the last two decades.
Roya Sadat has established, among others, ROYA Film House, the first Afghan woman owned film company established in 2003. She directed her first award-winning film, Three Dots, which she had written while living under Taliban rule. Her films and television dramas fostered dialogues among Afghan audiences. Roya Sadat has been invited to more than 60 international film festivals where she has won dozens of awards for her movies, “Three Dots”, “Playing the Taar” and “A Letter to the President”, which was selected as the official entry from Afghanistan for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 90th Academy Awards. With 20 years of experience in producing, writing and directing acclaimed films which told the stories of Afghans, especially of the women and other vulnerable groups who faced human rights abuses in Afghanistan, she has established herself as a pivotal figure in international film, television and human rights realms. When the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August 2021, Roya was forced to flee the country with her family to the United States where they have resettled and plans to continue telling the story of Afghans in this critical period of the country’s history.
