#103: Elhum Shakerifar, Documentary Producer

Best Girl Grip

My guest this week is Elhum Shakerifar, a BAFTA nominated producer and winner of the 2017 Women in Film & TV's BBC Factual Award and one of Screen International’s 2018 #Brit50 Producers on the Rise.

Elhum’s multi-award-winning credits include The Reluctant Revolutionary (Sean McAllister, 2012), The Runner (Saeed Farouky, 2013), multi-award-winning A Syrian Love Story (Sean McAllister, 2015), Even When I Fall (Sky Neal and Kate McLarnon, 2017), BIFA winner for Best Documentary, Almost Heaven (Carol Salter, 2017), ISLAND (Steven Eastwood, 2017), Of Love & Law (Hikaru Toda, 2017) and Ayouni (Yasmin Fedda 2020). Her work has been broadcast internationally and screened at festivals including Berlinale, IDFA, Rotterdam and CPH:DOX. Elhum was also a recipient of the 2016 BFI Vision Award.

I was both excited and nervous to speak to Elhum because she has produced a body of work that is interrogative and curious and empathic and I wanted to come to the conversation with that same energy, knowing that we would likely cover some complex topics.

And we did, we spoke about the vulnerabilities and ethical considerations inherent to making documentary, how she prioritises relationships and intentionality as opposed to access, what a greater level of respect for documentary filmmaking would look like, why and how she distributes her own films through her company Hakawati and also how she persists, to keep telling stories that are meaningful and difficult and heartfelt.

It was a really gratifying conversation and one that I’m really glad to have had, so I hope you enjoy it just as much.