My writing and translation work meanders between English, French and Persian, often reflecting on the macro/micro of migration, on illness and transmission, on the creative process itself. I love the Oulipo, the possibility and politics of language, the untranslatable. My work as a poet and essayist has been published by Modern Poetry in Translation, Another Gaze, Brixton Community Cinema, T A P E Collective, LUX, Film Video Umbrella, BFI Online, MAP Magazine, Critical Muslim and MUBI, and translated into French, Turkish and Czech. I have read my poetry at the Southbank, The Africa Centre, The Common Press, Reference Point and Mosaic Rooms. I am an alumni of Writerz & Scribez' inaugural poetry Griots (2022) and am currently part of the Southbank New Poets Collective (24/25).

My film work spans production, education, specialist distribution / impact work and curation. Recently, I was Executive Producer of Clear Night, Helene Kazan's multi-sensory investigative homage to Asmahan for the 2025 Sharjah Biennial. My BAFTA-nominated productions include A Syrian Love Story (2015, Sean McAllister), Of Love & Law (2017, Hikaru Toda), Even When I Fall (2017, Sky Neal & Dara McLarnon), A Northern Soul (2018, Sean McAllister) and Ayouni (2020, Yasmin Fedda), working with partners including BBC, BFI, Arts Council England, Sundance and Joseph Rountree Foundation amongst many others. Current productions include works by Ana Naomi de Sousa, Brett Story and Mohamed Jabaly with a range of partners including BBC Films and ARTE.

Experimentation with form and collaboration models have been a key part of my practice, for which I've been celebrated with a BAFTA nomination for Outstanding Debut (2016), a British Film Institute 'Vision Award' (2016) and the Women in Film & TV Award (2017). As a curator, my focus has been the SWANA region, including curating for London Film Festival (2014-21), Shubbak – festival of contemporary Arab culture (2015-19), Barbican (Poetry in Motion: Contemporary Iranian Cinema, 2019), BFI (Drama & Desire, the films of Youssef Chahine, 2023) and I am currently on the board of the Palestine Film Institute, co-curating the Palestine Film Platform.

Before working with film, I worked primarily with photography, exhibiting in Oxford and Paris, and facilitating workshops on PhotoVoice's "Moving Lives" project working with unaccompanied minors in London (2005-07) that culminating in the publication New Londoners (2008), for which I was awarded a Jack Petchey Foundation 'Young People's Champion' Award. I later produced The Grey Line by Jo Metson Scott (2013) inaugural Firecracker Award recipient, and a TIME, Guardian and Telegraph top photobooks of 2013.

I have taught in a variety of contexts at University College London, Freie Universitat in Berlin, University of East Anglia, Middlesex University, and I have developed UK curriculum resources including for teachers working with K3 & 4 level students. I have devised and taught workshops internationally, including for Doc House in Tunisia, Caravan Between Women Filmmakers in Egypt, Locarno Academy, Sarajevo Film Festival and Beirut DC amongst others. I've also taught with organisations and institutions including Bradford City of Culture, British Film Institute, New Economics Foundation, Royal Anthropological Institute, Batumi Film Festival and Art Dubai.

For fuller film credits, please visit www.hakawati.co.uk