Crew shot outside the Al-Masjid Al-Jamie Mosque - Left to Right, Director Ghazaleh Golbakhsh, Producer Gemma Duncan, Director of Photography Kelly Chen, 1st Assistant Camera Nahyeon Lee, Production Assistant Sara Shirazi, Sound Recordist Debra Frame. Photo: Photography by Ainsley Duyvestyn-Smith | @ds_documentary
Ghazaleh Golbakhsh, Director Photo: Photography by Sascha Stejko
Director: Ghazaleh Golbakhsh
Series director Ghazaleh Golbakhsh is an Iranian-New Zealand writer, filmmaker, and Fulbright scholar who is currently undertaking her PhD in Media and Communications.
She has written and directed award-winning short films. Ghazaleh is currently developing her first feature screenplay and publishing her first book of personal essays.
Producer: Gemma Duncan
Involved predominantly in documentary, Gemma has worked in creative, editorial, and production roles for the past eight years, both in New Zealand and London.
Gemma Duncan, Producer Photo: Disorient Pictures
Career highlights include directing the New Zealand Film Commission short documentary Meet Peter (Special Mention, Documentary Edge Festival 2017) and working in the core production team for the BAFTA Award-winning broadcast of World War One Remembered: Passchendaele. Other work includes production on Blind Date UK, with Graham Norton's company SO TV, and the Lexus LC500 - Make Your Mark campaign with music producer Mark Ronson in Ibiza. Gemma's long-term goal as a creative producer is to bring to life character-driven stories with a polished vision.
Executive Producer: Shuchi Kothari
Shuchi Kothari is a critically acclaimed filmmaker (Firaaq, Apron Strings, Coffee & Allah, Shit One Carries) and academic (University of Auckland). As a writer and producer, her films have screened in more than 100 film festivals, including Venice, Cannes, Toronto, and Telluride.
Her Indian feature film Firaaq (dir. Nandita Das) was based on the genocide of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002. Coffee & Allah (dir. Sima Urale) was inspired by her sister-in-law's fear of being "visible" in a hijab after the 2005 London train bombing. Shuchi's creative work consistently focused on issues of inclusion, exclusion, home, belonging, cultural hegemony, and personal resistance.
She co-founded the Pan-Asian Screen Collective in 2018 to advocate for a more equitable access to means of production and for increased Pan-Asian representation on and behind the screen in New Zealand.
Director of Photography: Kelly Chen
Kelly Chen is an emerging cinematographer in New Zealand. Since finishing her screen arts degree at Unitec, specialising in camera at the end of 2011, she has been a camera assistant, operator, and director of photography. As an immigrant from Taiwan, from a young age, she loved being involved with multicultural productions and stories that represent different voices from different nationalities.
Some of her work involved an award-winning short film, Promise of Piha, an NZ/Tongan story directed by Hanelle Harris; East meets East, a short documentary for Loading Docs, directed by Julie Hsu about Chinese grandparents in NZ; the Friday Night Bites web series, directed by Roseanne Liang, for which Kelly was awarded bronze for cinematography of episode four of season two by the NZ Cinematographers Society; and seasons one and two of Baby Mama's Club, a Māori and Pacific Islander series directed by Hanelle Harris, for which season one was awarded best web series by TVNZ in 2017. Over the last year, she has been operating and shooting for NZME and The Spinoff for various promotional and documentary content.
Editor: Amie Bentall
Amie has edited prime time documentary shows Dog Squad, Dog Squad Puppy School, and Border Patrol for Greenstone TV. She was the EPK editor on the feature film The Breaker Upperers, and has worked on a range of reality television shows, including Dancing with the Stars, My Kitchen Rules, Generation What, and The Block. Most recently, she created the kids series Young Riders for Heihei, which is currently in production on a second series.
Fatima, Lara and Aliya with the entire crew filming Tima on Milford Beach. Photo: Photography by Ainsley Duyvestyn-Smith | @ds_documentary
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