A conversation with Elhum Shakerifar, BAFTA nominated producer and curator, producing and distributing documentaries through her company Hakawati. In this episode, we discuss the importance of storytelling through documentary film, finding truth and creating a space of reality, raising important questions to audiences, and the future of filmmaking amidst the current climate.  Speaker bio: Elhum is a BAFTA nominated producer and curator, producing and distributing documentaries through her company Hakawati with the core ethos that a good story is all in the telling. Recent credits include winner of the BIFA for Best Documentary winning Almost Heaven (Carol Salter, 2017), BFI/Sundance funded Even When I Fall (Sky Neal and Kate McLarnon, 2017) and Arts Council funded ISLAND (Steven Eastwood, 2017). In 2015, her BIFA, BAFTA and EFA nominated production A Syrian Love Story (Sean McAllister, 2015) won a Cinema for Peace Justice Award, screened in UK and European parliaments and in over 70 countries. Her work has been broadcast internationally and screened at festivals including Berlinale, IDFA and Rotterdam. Elhum is a programme advisor for London Film Festival for films from MENA and Iran, and Film Curator for Shubbak, festival of contemporary Arab culture. In 2017, she was nominated for the Arab British Centre’s Award for Culture and was awarded the Women in Film and TV Factual Award 2017 and was one of Screen International’s 2018 #Brit50 Producers on the Rise. Elhum is also a lecturer at the Free University of Berlin and a research fellow of the Department of Anthropology at Goldsmiths University. Donate! Please consider donating towards our work: Patreon.com/habibicollective. A small monthly donation goes a long way towards paying innumerable costs including: screening fees for filmmakers, MGs, design assets and the endless web costs of developing a streaming service. Habibi Collective operates completely on a volunteer-led basis—is vital that we stay independent.  --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/roisin-tapponi/support