Quotes

ECHOLOCATION

“The way we remember, both individually and collectively, is tightly bound to the purported truth of the archive; whether it be a box of photos found in a family member's attic, a piece of microfiche in a library, or a series of letters unearthed and read for the first time in decades. In Echolocation, this archive is personal and bravely vulnerable…

Shihab models what it means to engage with personal archives in expansive, generative ways—to allow for greater knowledge of ourselves as we burst forth into the future, continually in motion with the material of our past.”

- Sarah Bakke, DOXA

JADDOLAND

“A deeply personal film a fresh and artistic sensibility both in front and behind the camera.”
- Independent Spirit Awards Jury

"Intimate, experimental, and beautifully playful."
- Documentary Award Jury, Austin Asian American Film Festival

"Jaddoland is a breath of fresh air: a film not tied down by convention or structure, it playfully and thoughtfully plumbs issues of identity, art, and belonging."
- Clint Bowie, Artistic Director, New Orleans Film Festival

“As Nadia watches, a picture emerges of what an uncareful observer might call assimilation: an outward adjustment obscuring depths of diasporic longing, the doubling and tripling of identities always grounded by that shifting but insistent anchor, the question of home.”
- Jon Kieran, Senior Programmer, New Orleans Film Festival

“Shihab’s palpable love for her mother courses through her film and “Jaddoland” functions both as a tribute to her work and life as well as a sincere interrogation of the idea of “home,” how the concept morphs and evolves depending on one’s own comfort with their journey.”
- Vikram Murthi, rogerebert.com

“[Shihab's] contemplation of the meaning of home unfolds also as a deeply moving meditation on the impact of time.
- Lisa Elin, Houston Film Critics Society

"Lying somewhere between experimental and home movie, filmmaker Nadia Shihab’s debut documentary JADDOLAND is a film as much about the shiftiness of place and personhood, as it is about Shihab’s curiosity as she gets reacquainted with a mother who evolves away from her in surprising ways."
- Christina Ree, San Diego Asian Film Festival

"Jaddoland’s expansive aesthetics creates new spaces for diverse audience reflections about how identity and culture are not only inherited but re-created and co-created across geography and time."
- Natalie Nesvaderani and Miasarah Lai, Visual Anthropology Review

AMAL’S GARDEN

"In Kirkuk, in northern Iraq, almost ten years after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, the Kurdish, Turkish and Iraqi flags fly side by side. The filmmaker of Amal’s Garden approaches this coexistence obliquely, with infinite tenderness, filming only what is intimate..." Charlotte Garson, Cinema du Reel

"A vivid portrait of a family, and a suggestive portrait of a complex community, with a few small strokes" - Shelly Kraicer, Vancouver International Film Festival

"A delicate and empathetic portrayal" - Karol Kućmierz, Ars Independent Film Festival

"A story of tenderness amid ever shifting conditions. It captures the of life of a small embattled family living under the hegemony of three competing flags- now four-and it shows the resilience of an ethnic minority in a pseudo state where those who rule are always changing.” Nezar AlSayyad, University of California, Berkeley

Reviews, Interviews, Talks

Sound Politics, Video Talk & Conversation with Nguyễn Trinh Thi and CoMMPCT (Collective for Multimodal Makers, Publishers, Collaborators, and Teachers), March 22, 2024

CBC Radio Interview, North by Northwest with Margaret Gallagher, Jan 2024

Film and the Political - with Nadia Shihab, Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, March 14, 2023.

The Bay Area’s Interdisciplinary Artistic Blueprint, Timezones, podcast by Lara Sarkissian, co-produced with Norient and Goethe Institute, Sept 2021

Jaddoland (Film Review), Visual Anthropology Review, Dec 2020

Jaddoland (Film Review), Educational Media Reviews Online, Dec 2020

Intuition and the Power of Reframing Stories, CAAMedia, July 2020

Jaddoland: An intergenerational portrait of love, (land), and loss, The New Arab, June 2020

The Liminal Echoes of the Displaced Soul, Film Inquiry, May 2020

Our Own Creative Processes are Intertwined, World Channel Video Interview, May 2020 (VIDEO INTERVIEW)

Spirit Award Winners: The Complete List, Variety, Feb 2020

2020 Spirit Award Winners List, Indiewire, Feb 2020

Kelly Reichardt, Producer Mollye Asher among Spirit Award Winners, Hollywood Reporter, Jan 2020

Films that Transcend Southern Stereotypes, Hyperallergic, Nov 2019

World Channel Pursues Role as Early Stage Co-Producer, CURRENT, Sept 2019

Texas Made Documentaries Shine at Austin Asian American Film Festival, Sightlines, May 2019