Sierra Leone / 2023 / 9mins / Experimental / Krio

Where My Memory Began follows elder Ballu as she tries to remember a 400-year-old cotton tree.

Priscillia Kounkou Hoveyda

Priscillia Kounkou Hoveyda is a black Iranian Freetown-based filmmaker (Where My Memory Began, We Will Be Who We Are), creative director and founder at the Collective for Black Iranians and Haus of Salone, a production and creative agency that advises on critically conscious storytelling. A recovering human rights lawyer, Priscillia has worked with the UN in conflict affected countries, negotiating the release of child soldiers in armed groups and implementing reintegration programming.
Priscillia’s experience with storytelling and filmmaking started with the founding of the Collective for Black Iranians (2020) where she has been directing and producing a slate of short films and documentaries centering Black Iranian narratives in Iran and its diaspora. Her work as a storyteller has been written about in multiple outlets, BBC World, BBC Persian, AlJazeera, AJ+, Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equality, France24, etc.
Priscillia’s visual storytelling is grounded in ancestral memory, intersectionality and Blackness to lyrically bear witness to Black life in its varied diasporic iterations. Her first short film, Where My Memory Began has been selected in prestigious film festivals (HotDocs, NYAFF, PAFF, Aspen Shortsfest) and her latest short film, We Will Be Who We Are, is currently in the festival circuit. Learn More