Roya Sadat is an internationally acclaimed Afghan filmmaker, celebrated for her transformative storytelling across film, television, and stage. She gives voice to women’s stories and inspires social change. Roya’s feature film, A Letter to the President, was Afghanistan’s official submission to the 2018 Academy Awards and premiered internationally at the Locarno and Busan Film Festivals, earning critical acclaim. Her debut feature film, Three Dots (Se Nuktah), written under Taliban rule and released in 2003, established Roya as Afghanistan’s first female filmmaker. Subsequent works, including Playing the Taar, Sima’s Song, and The Sharp Edge of Peace, further cemented Roya’s reputation as a fearless and humanist storyteller.

Roya has won over 50 international awards, including the International Women of Courage Award (2018), the Kim Dae-Jung Nobel Peace Film Award (2021), recognition as one of BBC’s 100 Inspiring and Influential Women (2021) and Foreign Policy’s Top 10 Global ReThinkers (2017). International media have consistently recognized Roya’s influence and courage: The New York Times called her a woman who “remade Afghan cinema against all odds.” BBC World profiled her as one of the most influential women of the year, and Variety described Roya as a “trailblazing director” challenging extremist ideologies through storytelling. Her work has also been featured by Foreign Policy, AFP, Los Angeles Times, Al Jazeera, The Hollywood Reporter, and many other media outlets.

Roya Sadat’s journey began in Herat during one of its most conservative periods. She was a teenager in a society that denied girls a future in the arts. Roya secretly wrote plays, formed the first girls’ theater group, and brought young women onto the stage—veiled and fearful, yet speaking in their own voices. Under Taliban rule, when girls were banned from education and cinema was forbidden, Roya educated herself with smuggled books, and wrote her first screenplay. In a city where cinemas were demolished, televisions removed, and watching films criminalized, Roya’s artistic courage was forged.

In 2003, she co-founded, with her sister Alka Sadat, Roya Film House, Afghanistan’s first female-led production company. Roya Film House has produced over 40 films centered on women’s rights and social justice. In 2013, Roya co-founded the Herat International Women’s Film Festival, the country’s first major platform for women filmmakers.

When the Taliban returned to power in 2021, Roya was directing an opera in the United States. Her home, assets, and archives were seized, and she was forced into exile. Undeterred, she completed Sima’s Song and The Sharp Edge of Peace, two of her most significant films.

In 2011, Roya married Aziz Deldar, a university lecturer, writer, and actor and they now have two children.

Roya continues to prove that cinema can survive borders, regimes, and exile, and that art remains one of the most powerful forms of resistance.