Nadia Shihab wins Spirit Award for Jaddoland

Nadia Shihab [M.F.A 2021], first from left, accepts the “Truer than Fiction Award” for her film Jaddoland.

Every year, Film Independent, the Los Angeles non-profit supporting independent filmmaking, awards 4 unrestricted grants to filmmakers for their contributions to cinema. This year, the Truer Than Fiction Award, a $25,000 unrestricted grant presented to an emerging non-fiction filmmaker, was given to Nadia Shihab, director of Jaddoland. Jaddoland (2018) explores the meaning of home and the search for belonging across generations. When the filmmaker returns to her hometown in the Texas panhandle to visit her mother, an artist from Iraq, she turns her lens on her mother’s increasingly isolated life, as well as the beauty and solace that emerge through her creative process. 

Nadia Shihab currently focuses her creative research on music and novel forms of scores. Her most recent work will be shown as part of the First Year MFA Show, opening Jan. 29, 2020.