Join us on September 30th at BAM for the screening of Shahrbanoo Sadat’s The Orphanage followed by a discussion with Leeza Ahmady (Curator-at-Large, Foundation for Spirituality and the Arts) and Lila Nazemian (ArteEast Programs Director).
Date: September 30, 2025 at 7pm
Ticket Price: $17 ($12 senior)
Address: Peter J Sharp Building, BAM Rose Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 11217
Tickets: https://www.bam.org/film/2025/the-orphanage
Film: The Orphanage, Shahrbanoo Sadat, 2019, Denmark, Germany, France, Luxembourg, Afghanistan, Qatar, 90 mins. Dari, Russian, and Hindi with English subtitles
Based on the private diaries of one of the film’s stars, Anwar Hashimi, this 2019 Danish-Afghan drama takes place in 80s Kabul, where 15-year-old street kid Qodrat gets by scalping tickets to the local cinema. But when he’s picked up by police and taken to a Soviet-operated juvenile facility known as “the orphanage,” he must adjust to regular meals and primary education, and everyone must grapple with what the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan will mean for life as they know it. Shahrbanoo Sadat’s film was screened in the Directors’ Fortnite section at Cannes in 2019 and is the second film in a planned five film series based on Hashimi’s writing.
Biographies:
Shahrbanoo Sadat (1991, Iran) is an Afghan filmmaker, writer and producer based in Kabul. Her debut film Wolf and Sheep won the top award in 2016 Quinzaine des Réalisateurs at Cannes. The film was developed with the Cannes Cinéfondation Residency in 2010; Sadat was 20 years old at the time, the youngest ever selected for the residency. She premiered her second feature The Orphanage in the same section at Cannes in 2019. Sadat studied documentary filmmaking at the Kabul workshop of Ateliers Varan in 2009. In 2013, she started her own production company Wolf Pictures in Kabul. Both Wolf and Sheep and The Orphanage are part of her pentalogy project (five feature films) based on Anwar Hashimi’s autobiographical text of 800 pages. Her film Kabul Jan has received support from the Hubert Bals Fund.
Leeza Ahmady is a curator known for orchestrating large-scale programs that frame contemporary art as communal ritual and a portal for spiritual reflection. Her groundbreaking research on post-Soviet Central Asia’s return to pre-Communist nomadic and Islamic identities—earned her an MA from Pratt Institute (2005) and led to presentations at major venues including the Venice Biennale, Istanbul Biennale, Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong, and dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel and Kabul (2005–2012). As Founding Director of Programs and Curator-at-Large at the Foundation for Spirituality and the Arts (FSA), Ahmady develops residencies, retreats, performances, and scholarly initiatives that explore the intersection of art and sacred transcendence. From 2005 to 2019, she led Asia Contemporary Art Week (ACAW) in New York, transforming it into a pioneering platform that amplified Asia-centric perspectives, particularly from underrepresented regions such as Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. Her work has fostered collaborations among hundreds of artists and institutions across Asia, the U.S., and beyond, challenging conventional curatorial and geographic frameworks. She has contributed to major exhibitions and public programs at the Guggenheim, MoMA, Asia Society, The Met, The Drawing Center, Art Basel, Queens Museum, and many more. Since 2020, Ahmady has reshaped ACAW into the Asia Contemporary Art Forum, a mentorship-focused initiative supporting artists and curators, including over 75 recently displaced Afghan artists. Her writings appear in numerous publications, catalogues, and monographs.
