Habiba Nosheen
Habiba Nosheen is a three-time Emmy award-winning investigative reporter and filmmaker with a creative practise and professional history has traversed many different spaces and mediums.
In a provocative conversation with writer, cultural strategist and organizer Karim Ahmad, Habiba Nosheen shares her origin story and reflects on the interconnected nature of art and journalism, while taking us through her process as an Investigative Reporter. Habiba was born in Pakistan and moved to Canada at the age of nine as a refugee. As a South Asian journalist, she talks about representation and stresses community responsibility in storytelling.
ON HER JOURNEY TO JOURNALISM
Karim Ahmad: Walk us through a little bit of your origin story as a filmmaker. How did you begin your journey in your field? You've traversed these different spaces and I'm also curious to hear you speak a little about whether you identify more as a journalist or an artist, a confluence of both or something else? And why?
““More and more, we’re seeing journalism as a tool to tell stories and reach people whose narratives just weren’t part of the discussion.
I like being grounded in the principles of journalism...
I think it’s an incredible honor to be able to tell the stories of people. “
”
FROM journalism to non-fiction filmmaking
Karim Ahmad: As you move from journalism into filmmaking - not that there's a particularly sort of like a separation between the two, especially recently, I feel like there's more emotional depth in journalism in the same way that there is in what would typically be considered a more cinematic kind of documentary. At what point did you feel yourself as, as a filmmaker, deepening your creative practice and bringing your own sort of emotional sensibilities in terms of the way that you tell your stories?
““ We don’t give space to complicated stories about communities of color, it’s always bad or good. There’s no middle. But I hope it starts the conversation that we want to talk about these things in our community. “”
ON HER EMMY AWARD WINNING FILM ‘OUTLAWED IN PAKISTAN’
Outlawed in Pakistan is a 2013 documentary film by Habiba Nosheen and Hilke Schellmann. The film follows Kainat Soomro, a Pakistani woman who was gang raped at the age of 13 and struggled to obtain justice. The film premiered at Sundance Film Festival and had its TV broadcast on PBS Frontline.
Karim Ahmad: I want to unpack your previous response further…
What drew you to making your first long form cinematic work - Outlawed in Pakistan? I don't want to take for granted that this was the case, but how did that start to move you into a place of deepening your creative practice in a different way, like a more cinematic, emotionally more character driven story than you might have done previously, potentially, in some of your journalism work?
““I was drawn to initially, that quest of finding stories about women who were resisting, in whatever way or form in their life.
And so I started to follow the journeys of multiple women.””
"Among the standouts is "Outlawed in Pakistan," tracing one girl's fight against the rape that brought her, not her attackers, a death sentence by tribal elders. From filmmakers Habiba Nosheen and Hilke Schellman, it is a story of courage wrought in tears, persistence etched in pain."- The Los Angeles Times
ON representation in storytelling for communities of color
Karim Ahmad: What draws you to that story, in your own experience? And then what is the way that your own personal experience is then sort of pulled into the narrative that you're telling? And how did that evolve over your career?
““When I do bring in my own lived experience , it’s done in a way that honors the stories of the other people who have shared their journeys with me, in this podcast, or in this film, I don’t want my experience to overtake that overtake the the space that I’m trying to create for them””
ON investigative reporting and her latest podcast
Karim Ahmad: Give us a little bit of a description of what the podcast is, what's the story? And where you're going in terms of how you navigated that idea of being able to bring your personal story into the film, or in this case, the podcast.
In recognizing that there are some things from your lived experience, that without the right level of nuance, and context, might inadvertently reinforce the stereotypes that you're actually trying to break apart - how tangibly, did you really navigate that challenge knowing that here's a story that in the wrong hands, or in the wrong context, could potentially uphold stereotypes that you are trying to break open and get underneath and dismantle?
“...But when I began to tell her story, it sort of made me think about why I was always silent. Why didn’t I tell people? Why don’t we talk about these things? Why should we talk about these things? What did we get out of it? And what happens when we’re silent about them? And how dangerous it can be when you keep secrets and bury them.”
What’s next for Habiba Nosheen…
Karim Ahmad: Give us a sense of what's next for you- what are you working on? Now, I know you just came off of this marathon of completing this podcast. And hopefully you're taking a much deserved rest, because that is so critically important- to recharge and fuel up and feed the tank, but how are you thinking about the next leg of your creative journey?
“The next project? I am certainly exploring some podcasts that I want to follow up with. That, I think, similarly would tell stories that from a perspective we don’t hear from, but I’m also working on a Film Project, which is about families with kids with terminal illnesses.
And it’s partly inspired by a lived experience.”
Habiba Nosheen is a three-time Emmy award-winning investigative reporter and filmmaker.
Previously, she was the co-host of CBC News investigative documentary program, The Fifth Estate and an investigative correspondent for CBC News. Prior to the CBC, she was with CBS NEWS: 60 Minutes in New York, where her work earned two Emmy awards.
She was also the director and reporter for the Emmy award-winning documentary, "Outlawed in Pakistan" which aired on PBS FRONTLINE. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival where it was called "among the standouts" of Sundance by The Los Angeles Times.
Her 2012 PBS investigation, "To Adopt A Child," earned her the Gracie Award for Outstanding Correspondent.
Habiba also held the prestigious NPR KROC Fellowship (2008-2009). She collaborated with This American Life and ProPublica for the 2013 radio documentary, “What Happened at Dos Erres?” which was called “a masterpiece of storytelling” by The New Yorker. The story was later adapted into a film by Stephen Spielberg and HBO called “Finding Oscar.”
A graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism Masters program in New York, her reporting has garnered numerous awards including three Emmys awards, the George Foster Peabody, the Gracie Award for Outstanding Correspondent, three Overseas Press Club awards, the New York Festival award, and the Third Coast Audio Festival award. She has also earned three nominations for the Livingston Award, which recognizes the work of top journalists under the age of 35.
Habiba was born in Pakistan and moved to Canada at the age of nine as a refugee. She is fluent in four languages. She teaches courses at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Her guilty pleasures include listening to terrible 90s pop music and baking cupcakes.
Karim Ahmad is a writer, culture strategist, organizer, member of the Guild of Future Architects, Creator of the Muslim Futures Project, and the founder of Restoring the Future, a network of community partners using worldbuilding and industry organizing to build a more just and beautiful media arts system. He was the Creator and Showrunner of the groundbreaking science fiction series, FUTURESTATES, and the writer of the upcoming speculative fiction comic book, DIVIDE.
He can be found on Twitter as @thatkarimahmad