A smile for life

Born in Tehran in 1990, Shahrbanoo Sadat spent her childhood in Iran before moving to her parents' native village in Afghanistan. Refusing an arranged marriage, she convinced her father and local authorities to enroll her in a boys' school. At 18, she left her village for Kabul, where a registration error led her to study cinema at Kabul University. After a year, she left her studies and worked for the Tolo TV channel. In 2009, she attended a documentary filmmaking workshop with Ateliers Varan and made her first short documentary film. In 2011, her first fiction short film, ==Vice Versa One==, was selected for the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes. In 2013, she founded her own production company in Kabul and co-directed ==Not At Home==, a film selected for the Rotterdam Film Festival. As the first female director from Afghanistan, she became the youngest ever selected for the Cinéfondation residency at Cannes, where she began writing ==Wolf and Sheep==. This film, inspired by her adolescence in Afghanistan, won an award at the Directors' Fortnight in 2016.