Sarah R. Lotfi

Sarah R. Lotfi, is an American writer-director born to an Iranian father and Chinese-American mother. Her love for history and world culture converged into a passion for filmmaking at a young age. In 2009, she helped launch the Intersections Film Festival featuring women filmmakers from the Middle East. At the age of 22, Lotfi was named a regional winner and national finalist in the 37th Student Academy Awards in 2010, for her surrealist re-imagining of the Russian front in her film The Last Bogatyr. Through the Emmy Foundation's National College TV Internship, Lotfi worked on HBO Films' Cinema Veritae. Other credits include work with ABC and National Geographic. Lotfi is also the writer and director of the award-winning German-language WWII film on disability, Menschen, which received 'very honorable mention' in the 2012 Senses of Cinema World Poll as well as awards including "Audience Choice", "Best Actor" and "Best of Fest". Lotfi has been a frequent panelist on crowd-funding after many successful campaigns on Indie GoGo and Kickstarter. In January 2014, Lotfi gave a presentation on Open Collaborations in Independent Filmmaking in the World Intellectual Property Organization's conference on Open Innovation: Collaborative Projects and the Future of Knowledge at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. Lotfi has also taught film theory at the University of Colorado.