Saodat Ismailova

Saodat Ismailova is an Uzbek filmmaker and artist who came of age in the post-Soviet era and has established an artistic life between Paris and Tashkent while remaining deeply engaged with her native region as a source of creative inspiration. After graduating in film making from the Tashkent State Institute of Arts, she began a residency at Fabrica, a research and communication center in Italy. Since then she shares her time between Tashkent, Uzbekistan and Paris, France. She first achieved international recognition with the release of Zukhra, a video installation that recounts the history of Uzbekistan through a state of sleeping character. In 2014, she premiered her first feature film, 40 Days of Silence, at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it was nominated for best debut film. She then went on to make a number of short films while at the Norwegian Office for Contemporary Art and Le Fresnoy, a French contemporary arts studio.