Asena Nour
Writer/Director
Asena Nour is an independent filmmaker exploring liminal, marginal and taboo subjects across documentaries, experimental and narrative films. Born and based in London, she offers a distinctly Turkish, working-class and diasporic lens to examine heritage, migration, mothers, memory, care and violence rooted in womanhood and the everyday. This year she was mentored by BIFA award-winning director Aleem Khan, of After Love (2020), she shadowed him for three short campaign films produced by Agile Films for the United Nations. She recently participated in 'The Languages of Cinema: the Key to Code Switching On-Screen' as part of BFI Future Film Festival 2023, joining fellow diasporic filmmakers to discuss the power of multilingual filmmaking.
The upcoming See You In The Dark (2023) is her much anticipated narrative debut short. An authentic and semi-autobiographical film, introducing an original, cerebral, and evocative voice in independent cinema. Her distinctive approach to social realism - what she calls 'intimate vertie' - at once, up close and personal, whilst providing a starkly observational portrait of London rarely seen on screen. The film launched on the international festival circuit at the start of this year at the Berlin British Shorts film festival, and was selected on the British Film Council portal by programmers T A P E Collective in a special programme dedicated to mixed-heritage and multilingual films.
Her latest short documentary, My Mother's Mother (2022) explores a personal and generational story of motherhood and migration, commissioned by Create Studios as part of their 'Making My Mark' project. The film premiered at the BFI Southbank in July and is currently touring English Heritage sites. It has screened at London Design Festival, London Short Film Festival, and Stroud Film Festival.
Her experimental short, Blood Ties (2021) observes two sisters who grapple with fate after a coffee cup reading. Blending Turkish rituals and feminine domesticity, the hallucinatory film explores desire, female isolation, patriarchal honour and tradition. Blood Ties premiered at Aesthetica Short Film Festival as part of TAPE Collective's guest programme 'Roots, Seeds, Flowers, Fruit'. The film screened at Sister Midnight's inaugural festival in LA.
Her first documentary Homeland Trilogy (2017) is currently available on BFI Player as part of T A P E Collective’s “But Where Are You Really From?” season at the BFI. The trilogy maps out the personal and generational migration stories of her family, as well as a look at a generation of young Muslims in multicultural London. The film has screened at the Barbican Centre, Hyde Park Picture House Leeds, Exeter Phoenix and Centrala Birmingham, as part of the UK-wide tour of ‘The Good Immigrant’ programme by T A P E Collective, where she participated in panel talks along with other diasporic filmmakers. She contributed 'The Root Will Grow Back', a meditation on diasporic filmmaking, to The Road To Nowhere Magazine founded by Dalia Al-Dujaili, who curated Homeland Trilogy as part of 'Finding Home, Forging Identity' at the Barbican Centre.
Selected Press
Selected wRITING