Mohammad Ali Sheida and LOkesh Ghai: Film screening and in-conversation, chaired by Babar Suleman

Mohammad Ali Sheida is an award-winning Afghan filmmaker and photographer living in exile in Manchester. He is the founder of Rowzana Production, the first film production company in Afghanistan’s central highlands which has a focus on telling stories from communities that are often overlooked, including documentaries advocating for Afghan girls’ right to ride bicycles and access education. Alongside his filmmaking, Sheida is an award-winning photographer and has organised major cultural events in Afghanistan, including the Damboora Festival and the Silk Road Festival. He also played a key role in the casting of Wolf and Sheep (2026) directed by Shahrbanoo Sadat which won the prestigious Art Cinema Award (top prize) at the Cannes Film Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight. After being forced to leave Afghanistan, Sheida has continued his work in exile. He is currently directing Jogi, Homeless at Homeland, a feature-length documentary that captures a critical moment in Afghanistan’s recent history. Join us to see as yet unreleased excerpts and hear more about his current projects. 

LOkesh Ghai lives and works between Ahmedabad, India and Manchester. As an artist and researcher he works with under-represented and marginalised heritage craft communities in India.  He is a recipient of awards from the V&A Museum and the India Foundation for Art. As part of Cotton-Exchange (2012), he was artist in residence with the Harris Museum in Preston, the Gallery of Costume, Manchester, and Blackburn Museum. Ghai regularly writes for Garland magazine and is currently pursuing a PhD at Manchester Metropolitan University. His work examines the entanglements of colonialism with the heritage craft of bespoke leather shoemaking from the Himalayas, caste discrimination, and queer phenomenology.  For this event he will present a film-in-progress documenting a recent research trip, including insights from an intimate apprenticeship undertaken at a small-scale studio in the Himalayas under a master artist. Accompanied by an artifact made during the research, the presentation will explore  inequality, identity and material, against the backdrop of the fragile mountain eco-system and the body of the maker, often made invisible by neoliberal capitalism.