Sophie Schrago is an anthropologist (PhD) and documentary filmmaker who draws on her experience living in different cultural settings to tell stories at the intersection of religion, race, ethnicity and gender. Her body of work – rooted in the exploration of power and culture and bridging the fields of social justice and art – has received support from the Gotham Film and Media Institute, Union Docs, Eurodoc, France's National Center for Cinema (CNC) and La SCAM, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the Logan Nonfiction Program among others.
After its premiere at the Arab Film Fest, her short documentary “Malcolm X and the Sudanese” (2020) screened at universities such as Brown, Bard, and Swathmore College and received a Global Muslim Impact Award Special Mention for Best Short Film with Muslim Subjects. Her first documentary feature as a producer, “A Thousand and One Berber Nights” had its world premiere at the New York African Film Festival in May 2024 and was broadcasted on Morocco's national television - 2M. In her upcoming documentary debut feature, Khatoon - one of India’s first woman Sharia judges - guides couples through conflict as she herself withstands pressures from her religion’s leadership.
After stints at University of Lausanne (BA), and the Geneva Music Conservatory, she deepened her interests in gender, religion, postcolonial studies and visual anthropology at the Geneva Graduate Institute (MA, PhD), Columbia University (visiting fellowship) and at the University of Manchester (postdoctoral fellowship). Her research has appeared in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Visual Anthropology Review, Journal des anthropologues, and Nouvelles questions féministes (co-founded by Simone de Beauvoir). She has programmed for the Geneva International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights (FIFDH) and serves as an International Documentary Association Awards juror since 2020. She spent her childhood in Geneva and Barrackpoore, and lives in Harlem, New York.