Between love and rejection: hybrid identities and transcultural documentary film-making: films by Sara Ishaq

This article focuses on the transcultural, Oscar-nominated Scottish Yemini, documentary film-maker Sara Ishaq, especially her films The Mulberry House and Karama has no Walls. I place Ishaq’s film in the context of a subgenre of non-fiction films, the increasingly important human rights documentaries, and I also align her work with the concept of ‘accented cinema’ and ways in which the hybrid identities of transcultural film-makers – operating in what Homi Bhabha describes as the ‘third space’ – translates into their films. The main argument is that the ‘politics of justice’ has inspired many minority and women’s groups in the world but that the simple epistemology of the human rights films is complicated by the hybrid identities of transcultural film-makers and the complexities of the domestic sphere where affect and politics are being played out.