Sabrina Zhao

Born and raised in Sichuan, China, Sabrina Zhao is a filmmaker and writer who has been creating moving-image artwork in Abu Dhabi, Tokyo and New York. Sabrina received her BA at New York University Abu Dhabi where she studied Film/New Media and Literary Studies.

Currently, she is an MFA candidate in film production at York University. Transiting between different lands, she observes the world on the move. In this migrating process, she listens to the unuttered voices traversing time, space and body. Sabrina's work bears strong influences of cinéma vérité and poetic realism, where she explores “national” and “cross-national” narratives through the grids of gender, and diasporic and historical identities. In her works, the boundary between fiction and fact is a mysterious space where private and collective memories can merge. Her recent projects include Vicky, I and Herself, a docu-fiction / experimental documentary that ponders on the ghostly presence of the female migrant workers in Abu Dhabi. Currently, she is developing a hybrid experimental work that explores the contradictions of Chinese femininity against the backdrop of rapid urbanism in southwestern China.