Nadia Shihab is a filmmaker, artist and educator working in the realm of experimental documentary. Her projects emerge through processes that are relational and intergenerational and have taken the form of short and feature-length films, sound, visual art and writing.
Described as “intimate, experimental and beautifully playful”, her first feature-length film JADDOLAND won five festival jury awards including the 2020 Independent Spirit "Truer than Fiction" Award and was broadcast for four seasons on US public television.
Her work has been exhibited at Cinéma du Réel at the Centre Pompidou, Walker Art Center, Berkeley Art Museum, Sursock Museum, Black Star Film Festival, Images Festival, DOXA, Cairo International Film Festival, Alchemy Film & Video Arts Festival, Camden International Film Festival, New Orleans Film Festival, LAAPFF, and Kasseler Dokfest, among others. She was a Fulbright Scholar to Turkey and a Flaherty Film Seminar Fellow, and has held residencies at the MacDowell Colony and Djerassi Residency. Her work has received support from the Sundance Documentary Fund, Firelight Media, Tribeca Film Institute, Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, Center for Asian American Media, and Bay Area Video Coalition.
Nadia’s creative practice is preceded by over a decade of work as a community practitioner. She holds a Masters of City & Regional Planning (2009) and an MFA in Art Practice (2021), both from the University of California at Berkeley. She was raised in west Texas by immigrant parents from Iraq and Yemen and is an Assistant Professor in Film in the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University.