Sabaah Folayan serves as the interim director of the Firelight Media Documentary Lab. Through screenwriting, filmmaking, and speaking, Sabaah Folayan levels an optimistic yet unflinching gaze on the urgent questions of our time.

Sabaah made her directorial debut at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, with the feature length documentary Whose Streets?. Nominated for Peabody, Critic’s Choice, Gotham and NAACP Awards, the film chronicles the experiences of activists living in Ferguson, Missouri when Michael Brown Jr. was killed. Whose Streets? was distributed theatrically by Magnolia Pictures, and broadcast for Television by POV.

She went on to write for HBO’s Betty, a comedy series about a crew of young female skateboarders in New York City. Sabaah is currently completing her second feature documentary as a director, and developing projects in fiction and new media.

Sabaah was born in Los Angeles, raised in Hawaii and educated in New York City, all of which make her a pro at adapting to new environments. Intending to pursue medicine, she graduated from Columbia University with a degree in biology. Outside-the-box thinking and a desire to improve society, naturally evolved into an artistic practice.

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