Bio

Through screenwriting and film, Sabaah Folayan levels an optimistic yet unflinching gaze at 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 hit show Betty, a coming-of-age dramedy about young women skateboarders in New York City. Sabaah is currently completing her second feature film as a director, and developing projects in fiction and New Media.

Born in Los Angeles, raised in Hawaii and educated in NYC, Sabaah is a pro at adapting to different environments. Intending to pursue medicine, she graduated Columbia University with a degree in biology. Outside-the-box thinking and a desire to improve the world at large, eventually led her to artistic practice as a vehicle for social change.