Rising Stars Scotland 2024: Raisah Ahmed (writer/director)

Glasgow-born writer/director Raisah Ahmed believes being South Asian and Scottish is a plus. “In Glasgow everyone’s as Scottish as everyone else, it’s an international label,” says Ahmed, who has several film and TV projects on her writing slate, some of which she aims to direct.

First World War story Half-Moon Camp, with producer Zorana Piggott and Film4, is written in five languages — German, English, Urdu, Punjabi and Arabic — and tells of a soldier who ends up in a prison camp run by the Germans and the Ottoman Empire, where authorities try to persuade Muslim PoWs to fight against the allies. “We’re putting it out to directors,” says Ahmed, who speaks English, Urdu, Punjabi and can read Arabic, but does not speak German; luckily there is very little German in her script.

Ahmed is also adapting Mahsuda Snaith’s book The Things We Thought We Knew with the author, having been brought the project by producer Shirine Best. A magical realist story about a woman with chronic illness set over two timelines, Ahmed is attached as director and has backing via the BFI’s first feature scheme. She recently attended a Screen Scotland script circle workshop with spec horror script St Kilda. Set on the Scottish island, the story revolves around a woman who works for the National Trust conservation organisation who is readying to leave the archipelago when some Americans are shipwrecked and lay claim to it, forcing her to protect the land and herself.

After graduating with a masters in literature, culture and place from the University of Strathclyde, Ahmed joined film apprenticeship programme Second Light in 2010, set up to address a lack of diversity within the industry and to work with young people. She wrote her first short film after being commissioned through Second Light, while her TV credits include directing on CBBC’s Sparks, BBC3’s The Break and writing on BBC digital channel The Social’s relationship drama Control, which is told over a phone. She was in the writers’ room for two seasons of Channel 4’s We Are Lady Parts and is adapting Martin Sixsmith’s book Ayesha’s Gift for TV with Freedom Scripted.

If forced to choose between TV and film, big screen wins. “I’ve grown up watching films and I’ve related to them even though most of the characters are nothing like me,” she says. “That’s what I want people to feel with the stuff I’m making.” As a Muslim filmmaker, she has never felt her faith has restricted her screen ambitions. “I’ve got an eclectic range of projects I’m working on across film and TV that proves that.”

Contact: Jessica Cooper, Curtis Brown 

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