Sarah Ema Friedland is a media artist and educator whose work is rooted in non-fiction but often uses the vocabularies of speculative fiction and fantasy to tweak and re-imagine reality. Her work has been screened and exhibited at institutions including Lincoln Center, Anthology Film Archives, The DCTV Firehouse Cinema, PBS, Apple TV, Cannes Film Festival Doc Corner Pitch, the Tang Teaching Museum,The Queens Museum and many more. Her works have been supported by grants and fellowships including Jerome, Paul Newman, Ford, NYSCA, the Palestine American Research Center, the LABA House of Study, and the MacDowell Colony. She was named one of the “Top 10 Independent Filmmakers to Watch” by the Independent Magazine, is a recipient of the Paul Robeson award from the Newark Black Film Festival and Newark Museum, and her film The Rink was nominated for a New York Emmy. Her recent feature documentary titled Lyd, which she is co-directing with Rami Younis, premiered at the 2023 Amman International Film Festival where it won the Jury Prize for Best Documentary and the FIPRESCI prize from the International Critics Association. Her work has been covered by Variety, The New York Times, Filmmaker Magazine, and The Brooklyn Rail. She has written about film for The Millenium Film Journal, Filmmaker Magazine, and the Journal of Palestine Studies. Friedland received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College and the International School of Film and Television in Cuba and her MFA from the Integrated Media Art Program at Hunter College. She was the founding Director of the MDOCS Storyteller’s Institute at Skidmore College  and is a Clinical Associate Professor at NYU, Liberal Studies where she also directs the Liberal Studies Global Media Lab.