Sama Brighton Film Festival celebrates freedom of expression and showcases displaced, diasporic and underrepresented filmmakers.
We’re excited to be supporting the Sama Brighton Film Festival this Refugee Week, celebrating displaced, diasporic and underrepresented filmmakers from around the world.
Across five nights in Brighton and Lewes, the festival will showcase powerful features, documentaries and short films, alongside discussions, music and opportunities to connect.
Have a read through the programme, see what catches your eye.
Sima's Song
Monday 15th June 2026
5:30PM
The Depot, Pinwell Road, Lewes, BN7 2JS:
The film will be followed by a live Q&A with director Roya Sadat, founder of Roya Film House and co-founder of the International Women's Film Festival in Afghanistan, currently taking place in exile after being outlawed by the Taliban.
Suraya and her inseparable friend, the talented singer Sima, try to cope in Afghanistan‘s unstable political landscape at the end of the 1970s.
From university halls to intimate gatherings, their contrasting visions of freedom clash and converge: Suraya, a wealthy advocate for communism, blinded by it‘s promise of equality, assumes a pivotal role within the pro-Russian faction, while Sima, a humble, conservative Muslim, skeptical of political power games, seeks refuge in tradition and gets married.
Despite their differences, their shared conviction to women‘s rights still binds them in sisterhood.
Short films & fundraiser
Tuesday 16th June
7PM - 10PM
Pink Moon, 52 Ship Street, Brighton and Hove, BN1 1AF:
3 Short films from Iran and Afghanistan exploring gender, identity, relationships and self-expression + discussion and music (tbc).
Your ticket donations will go towards supporting Hummingbird Refugee Project to keep their vital Global Social Club for young refugees up and running. Hear from some of the people they support on the evening.
https://www.hummingbirdproject.org.uk/gsc-youth-club-brighton.html
Join us at Pink Moon for the chance to see and discuss a selection of short films from diaspora and underrepresented filmmakers from Iran and Afghanistan. Selection includes films by Iranian women (and men) exploring gender and identity, animation examing the notion of borders, and a comic take on taboos around dating in Afghanistan.
Champions of the Golden Valley
Wednesday 17th June
7PM - 10:30PM
The Rose Hill, Rose Hill Terrace, Brighton, BN1 4JL:
Come together to see Champions of the Golden Valley – an award-winning documentary that captures the emergence of a homegrown ski culture in the mountains of Afghanistan. Stay afterwards for drinks and discussion.
Showing on Day 3 of the Sama Brighton Film Festival, the film reveals a breathtaking and seldom-seen side of the country — a remote region where joy, resilience, and community are forged on the slopes. After narrowly missing his chance to become Afghanistan’s first Olympic skier, Alishah Farhang returns to the remote snow-capped mountains of his homeland to inspire a vibrant new ski culture. Bringing together young athletes from rival villages with makeshift wooden skis, he organizes a ski race like no other. When their world is suddenly upended, Alishah and the athletes must call upon the lessons learned on the slopes to find their way forward.
“A moving and timely story about what joy and unity look like when everything else is falling apart. I’m proud to support this film and the young people whose courage and spirit it so beautifully captures. ” — MALALA YOUSAFZAI, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
https://www.championsofthegoldenvalley.com/
My Childhood, My Country - 20 Years in Afghanistan
Thursday 18th June
7PM
Dukes at Komedia, Gardner House, 44-47 Gardner St, BN1 1UN:
The film will be followed by an in-person Q&A with directors Shoaib Sharifi and (Brighton-based filmmaker) Phil Grabksy. Come and find out more about the making of this extraordinary film, shot throughout the period between the fall of the Taliban in 2001 and their return to power twenty years later.
Award-winning filmmakers, Phil Grabsky and Shoaib Sharifi, present a real-life epic of boyhood and manhood, filmed across twenty years in one of the most embattled corners of the globe. My Childhood, My Country - 20 Years in Afghanistan follows the journey of Afghan youth, Mir Hussain, growing up in a land ravaged by war. When we first meet Mir, he is a boy of eight playing among the ruins of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in wartorn rural Afghanistan, treating the destruction around him as a wonderful playground. It is 2002 and in the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Centre, US troops have landed in Afghanistan, thus beginning a seemingly endless war in one of the world’s poorest countries.
This intimate feature documentary follows Mir’s journey over the next two decades, telling a remarkably personal story of the poverty, destruction, aspiration and progress that colours Afghan life today. Now a grown man with a family of his own and an emerging career as a news cameraman in Kabul, Mir’s personal journey of pride, resilience and hope is interwoven with the narrative of his nation. Mir’s story is joined by the sobering comments of soldiers, key politicians and journalists who offer insights into the bigger picture – the successes and failures, rights and wrongs over the past 20 years of conflict. Two decades on from 9/11 and the subsequent ‘War on Terror’, My Childhood, My Country - 20 Years in Afghanistan offers a uniquely personal insight into one of the most devastating conflicts of the 21st Century. After a trillion dollars spent by 40 countries and 150,000 lives lost, the film asks was it worth it, for Mir, his country and the world?
Bauryna Salu
Friday 19th June
6PM - 10:30PM
Fabrica, 40 Duke Street, Brighton, BN1 1AG:
113mins + Q&A with Producer Dias Feld
According to the ancient nomadic tradition of “bauryna salu”, Yersultan is given away as a baby to be raised by his grandmother, growing up largely disconnected from his birth parents. When his grandmother dies unexpectedly as he turns 12, Yersultan is forced to return to a family he barely knows. Struggling to build a relationship with his parents - especially his father - while navigating the turbulence of adolescence, he finds himself caught between duty, grief and the search for belonging.