#interview with Dana Ziyasheva

[queen-of-films]

I had the pleasure of interviewing Dana Ziyasheva (who is now a part of our Incluvie team!), who wrote and directed her featured film Defenders of Life (2015). Ziyasheva was born in Kazakhstan, and went on to become a journalist and a UNESCO diplomat where she spent 20 years working for the United Nations. As a UNESCO diplomat, she worked with indigenous tribes in Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Mexico. This was when she decided to make a career in filmmaking after she encountered the Ngäbe community in Costa Rica, and that’s how Defenders of Life was born. Interesting fact: FNX (First Nations Experience TV), the first and only national broadcast television network in the United States exclusively devoted to Native American and World Indigenous content, purchased the rights to broadcast Defenders of Life and was the first U.S network to premiere the film in North America. Defenders of Life is about the Ngäbe community leader Doña Carmen, conflicted by her tribe’s traditional ways after her 12-year-old granddaughter is impregnated by their 70-year neighbor, who plans to marry her. While the film is based on the Ngäbe people in Costa Rica, the film can relate to the obstacles Native Americans face in present-day America. It is a perfect film for Native American Heritage Month. In this interview, Dana Ziyasheva gives us insights into the making of Defenders of Life, and the hardships Ngäbe girls endured in Costa Rica.

Read the rest of my interview with Dana Ziyasheva on Incluvie.