Co-Founding Member & Advisor

 

Born in Kabul, Saqeb is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and women’s right activist who lived in Iran for 24 years. She is a co-founding member of “Bashgahe Cinema – Afghanistan Cinema Club – BASA” in 2006, a non-profit organization that promotes cultural and arts development projects with a focuses on training and producing the work of emerging Afghan filmmakers in Afghanistan. Diana has also worked as a Production Manager for 1TV, as a Deputy Director for Kabul International Film Festival (2nd & 3rd Edition) and Second Take Film Festival in 2008, a festival that explores gender issues and women in today’s global filmmaking industry. In 2011, she teamed-up with Malek Shafi’i and Hassan as the Production Manager and Coordinator to co-launch the first Edition of “Afghanistan Human Rights Film Festival -1st Edition” (AHRFF). She co-directed the film festival 2rd Edition on 2013.

 

Her films, mostly highlighting women’s rights issues in Afghanistan, have been screened in different international film festivals across the globe. Her first feature documentary “25 Darsad“(25 per cent) follows six female members of the Afghan parliament and the challenges they had to face in their daily lives to become active in the Afghan peace and political process. This film has been showed at film festivals in Krakow, Guangzhou, and Sweden, as well as in the UK, at the Swedish and Norwegian Parliaments, and at the ISAF Camp in Mazar-e-sharif. The film received an award at the International Film Festival of Cambodia.

Her second feature documentary film “Run Roobina Run” tells the story of Roobina Moqimyar, the first Afghan female athlete to compete and represent Afghanistan at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. The film was screened during the Beijing Olympic Games.

 

At 28, Saqeb led the first public women’s rights protests in Afghanistan since the 1970’s in 2009 to march in the streets of Kabul, when President Karzai promised to reform and improve the Shia Family Law which had legalized Taliban-era abuses of women. “Mohtarama” is a film documentary that she and Malek Shafi’I directed and produced where filmmaker Shafi’I follows Diana as one of the main organizers of these protests against the Shia Law, and highlights the continuing struggles and concerns of like-minded women.