Olga Nakkas

Olga Nakkas was born on March 30, 1953 in Mersin, Turkey, the daughter of a Turkish mother and a Lebanese father. Her family moved to Beirut, Lebanon in 1958. She studied in Paris and worked for the BBC and Canal Plus. At the end of the Lebanese Civil War, she returned to Beirut.

Her film ‘Ashura (1987) is about Shi‘ites in southern Lebanon during the holiday of Ashura. She described her work about women in post-war Lebanon, Lebanon, Bits and Pieces (1992), as "the first film into which I really put a lot of myself. It deals with my relationship with my past and with a country I love and hate at the same time." She focused on the country again in Mother, Lebanon & Me (2009). She examined issues around hijabs and veils in Turkey in Women of Turkey: Between Islam and Secularism (2006). Her film Mon ami Imad et le taxi, about a taxi driver wandering the empty streets of civil war Beirut, began as an unfinished Super 8 film shot in 1985. Né à Beyrouth combined her film with another unfinished work by Hassan Zbib and presented it with an electronic music soundtrack at their 2006 festival.