Nadira Ilana

Nadira Ilana is an indigenous Dusun filmmaker and film programmer from Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. Her award-winning films cover subjects from politics to climate warming and indigeneity. Many of her personal films have been endeavours to fill plot holes in her own Borneo-Malaysian identity. She is best known for The Silent Riot (2012), a documentary on the Sabah political riots of 1986 and the post-colonial romantic short, Were the Sun and the Moon to Meet (2020). In 2015 she founded Telan Bulan Films to amplify media representation for indigenous and minority voices, ethically – CineBah is their film programming arm. Nadira’s debut feature film, ‘Ballad of the Half-Boy’ based on a KadazanDusun folktale of eclipses and ravenous monsters, is slated for release in 2025.