Sahar Zand

Award-winning investigative journalist, producer, and documentarian Sahar Zand is highly regarded for her work on some of today’s most pressing topics: the Iran Nuclear Deal, mental health in Afghanistan, the refugee crisis, climate change, and many more. Zand shares insights about her creative and disruptive style of journalism, and delves into her role bringing these stories to light.

Having spent a large part of her youth in refugee camps and amongst underprivileged people, Sahar Zand has a personal desire to provide a platform for those in need to seek justice and have their fears, troubles and achievements seen by the world.

Not only has Sahar Zand been through the system as a refugee seeking asylum in various European countries, including the UK, but several of her documentaries have focused on the experiences of displaced peoples around the world.

As an Iranian in Europe, Sahar Zand is well aware of how even the slightest racial differences can be a cause of othering. Having battled against stigma, stereotypes and internal approaches to her own identity, race and identity are two issues she is intimately familiar with. Though Sahar identifies as British-Iranian, racially, her background is a lot more mixed. One of her grandmothers was Kurdish, whilst the other was from Russia. Furthermore, one of Sahar’s grandfathers was from Afghanistan. This meant that Sahar was brought up in a multi-lingual and multi-cultural environment, where issues around race and culture for her were always at the forefront.

The importance of mental wellbeing has slowly been brought into the public arena in recent years, but how possible is it to continue working alongside a cause of trauma? Whilst awareness is on the rise, Sahar Zand is still balancing the PTSD caused from her work in hostile environments with the need to continually return to the field in order to keep working. Sahar is a massive advocate for seeking mental health support and this is reflected in some of the documentaries she has worked on.

Born in the Islamic Republic of Iran, and bound by conservative views to sexuality in her teens, Sahar Zand has witnessed the damage that honour-based abuse causes within families and communities around the world.

Sahar Zand has taught at graduate and postgraduate level, teaching different processes involved in documentary making. From idea generation to development, pitching, journalism, reporting, production, and post-production, Sahar is able to pass on her hands-on experience in various parts of the craft. As a young, dyslexic woman of colour with a diverse background, Sahar had to overcome a lot of obstacles in this privileged-oriented world; experiences which she often incorporates into her teaching.

Above all, journalists understand the vital importance of free speech and a free press. Having grown up without access to either of these freedoms, and being forced to escape her home country of Iran and eventually losing her father to the cause, Sahar Zand is determined to champion the rights of free press in her work and her personal life.

Whether as a refugee fighting for settled status, as a teenager fighting against cultural norms to assimilate into a completely new society, or as a young immigrant woman fighting for her career in a male-dominated space, Sahar Zand has spent the last two decades of her life overcoming adversity. She believes that by shifting perception, we are able to turn these negatives into strengths, applying them to all sorts of challenges in life.