Yasmin Fedda is a Palestinian filmmaker, artist, creative producer, and academic, based in the United Kingdom. She is most noted as a documentary film director, producer and programmer, and has taught with film organisations, NGOs and universities internationally. She was a co-founder of the project Highlight Arts, UK, which works with artists in times of conflict.
Her films have won awards and been screened at international festivals including the Sundance Film Festival and the Edinburgh Film Festival, as well as being broadcast by the BBC and Al Jazeera English. Fedda is a senior lecturer in film at Queen Mary University of London.
Background Yasmin Fedda holds an M.A. in social anthropology from the University of Edinburgh, an M.A. in visual anthropology from the University of Manchester's Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology, and a Ph.D. by practice in Transdisciplinary Documentary film from the University of Edinburgh.
Having spent a year as a support worker at the Garvald Edinburgh bakery, she made the short documentary film Breadmakers (2007), which had an acclaimed reception, being named as best short documentary at the Middle East International Film Festival and was nominated for a BAFTA for best short Scottish documentary of 2007. Her 2014 film Queens of Syria also won the Black Pearl award at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival. It is a documentary that follows a theatre project run with Syrian refugee women in Amman, where they are in the final rehearsals of staging a new version of Euripides's tragedy, The Trojan Women, interwoven with their own experiences of war.
Fedda's 2020 film Ayouni premiered at CPH:DOX in 2020. Described by Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian as "a powerful and urgent documentary tribute", Ayouni focuses on Bassel Safadi and Paolo Dall'Oglio, both "forcibly disappeared" in Syria, Bassel's wife Noura Ghazi Safadi, and Machi, Paolo's sister. In 2024, Fedda's interactive installation The Pathogen of War premiered at CPH:DOX, and also that year she made the feature-length film How We Work, with 39 filmmakers across the world.
Fedda has been a participant in a variety of conferences and her work has been widely shown at festivals, on television and in galleries around the world, including at the Sundance Film Festival, the Edinburgh Film Festival, the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, the Glasgow Film Festival, the Carthage Film Festival, the Dublin Film Festival, and the Abu Dhabi Film Festival.
She is a co-founder of the Highlight Arts project, "which brings together a diverse array of artists, writers, photographers and others to explore the stories of and to give voice to those affected by war, environmental disaster and other forms of conflict", making use of residencies, workshops and labs, translations and collaborations.
Filmography Features 2012: A Tale of Two Syrias 2014: Queens of Syria 2020: Ayouni 2024: How We Work 2024: The Pathogen of War (interactive installation)
Short films 2004: Milking the Desert 2007: Breadmakers 2009: Moving Pictures 2011: Waiting for Spring 2013: Siamo Tornati/We are Back 2015: Abu Hawash 2015: Found in Translation 2015: Rebel Geeks: Steal from the Capitalists 2020: Blink and You'll Miss Us
Selected writings (with Daniel Gorman) "Cinema of Defiance", Critical Muslim, 11.2, 2015. (with Daniel Gorman and Tory Davidson) Creation and Displacement – Developing New Narratives Around Migration, IETM – International Network for Contemporary Performing Arts, 2016 "Filming the Invisible", New Lines Magazine, 28 October 2020. "Am I still a filmmaker?", Raising Films, 2021 "Time, grief, and hope on film", HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2022 (with Daniel Gorman) "Three Nights in Free Syria", The Markaz Review, 24 January 2025. (co-written chapters) "Researching protracted displacement" and "A new political economy of displacement", in Refugees in a World Without Aid (edited by Ceri Oeppen, Ali Ali, Michael Collyer, Priya Deshingkar, Anne-Meike Fechter, and Tahir Zaman), Open Press, University of Sussex, 2025.
Awards 2004: One World Broadcasting Trust award, Milking the Desert 2006: Debut competition Jury Prize, Moscow Visual Anthropology Film Festival, Milking the Desert 2007: BAFTA nomination for best short film, Breadmakers 2007: Scottish Short Film Award, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Breadmakers 2008: Best Short Film, Emotions Film Festival, Greece, Breadmakers 2008: Black Pearl Short Documentary Award, Middle East Film Festival, Abu Dhabi, Breadmakers 2008: Palme Dewar Award, Heartland Film Society, Breadmakers 2009: Special Jury Mention, Gdansk DocFilm Festival, Breadmakers 2014: Black Pearl for Best Director from Arab World, Abu Dhabi Film Festival, Queens of Syria 2014: Special mention from the UNHCR, Human Screen Film Festival, Tunis, Queens of Syria 2015: Best Documentary Film Award, Salé International Festival of Women's Film, Morocco, Queens of Syria 2015: Prix Safi Faye CREDIF (UNESCO), Best Female Director, Carthage Film Festival, Queens of Syria 2015: Tanit de bronze for Best Documentary, Carthage Film Festival, Queens of Syria 2015: UNHCR/CONARE Director Prize, CineMigrante Festival, Argentina, Queens of Syria 2016: Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature, Twin Cities Arab Film Festival, Minneapolis, Queens of Syria 2016: Best Documentary Feature, Twin Cities Arab Film Festival, Minneapolis, Queens of Syria 2021: Commendation, RAI Film Prize, Royal Anthropological Institute Film Festival 2022: Eurimage Award, for Best Prototype for The Pathogen of War at CPH:DOX
References
External links Yasmin Fedda website Yasmin Fedda at IMDb "Queens of Syria: 'Why refugees need to tell their stories'- an interview with Yasmin Fedda", Learning Lab Editions, 2015. "Yasmin Fedda: Interview (2015)", Scottish Documentary Institute, 18 August 2015. "Being an Arab woman filmmaker with Yasmin Fedda", Arts Canteen, 11 June 2021.