Yá’át’ééh
Sabrina Saleha is a Diné (Navajo) and Bengali director, screenwriter and actress.
As fate would have it, her Navajo mom and Bengali dad found love in the club, and the rest is herstory. Sabrina is both Indigenous to this land and the first-generation daughter of an immigrant dad. Gone are the days of stressing over which ethnicity checkbox to mark. Now, she’s a filmmaker who blends puns and culture like the perfect recipe.
Sabrina is making her directorial debut with the upcoming short film LEGEND OF FRY-ROTI: RISE OF THE DOUGH. In this quirky comedy, a biracial niece must avert an identity crisis when her Navajo and Bengali aunties clash in a high-stakes bread competition that threatens to derail her 25th birthday party—forcing her to discover the true meaning of dough-mestic harmony. In support of her film, Sabrina has been awarded the VISION MAKER MEDIA CREATIVE SHORTS FELLOWSHIP, the GEORGIA FILM IMPACT GRANT, and the FIRST PEOPLES FUND FELLOWSHIP.
She was a 2022 NATIVE AMERICAN MEDIA TV WRITER’S LAB fellow with LA SKINSFEST, 2023 NATIVE AMERICAN ANIMATION LAB sponsored by SONY ANIMATION, a 2023 IMAGINENATIVE SCREENWRITING FEATURE LAB fellow sponsored by NETFLIX, and a graduate of the inaugural NYU TISCH DIRECTING INTENSIVE FOR INDIGENOUS VOICES in August 2024.
Sabrina earned her Master of Fine Arts in Screenwriting from the INSTITUTE OF AMERICAN INDIAN ARTS in May 2023. Along the way, she has been recognized with scholarships from WARNER BROS. DISCOVERY, the AMERICAN INDIAN CIRCLE FELLOW, and the NAVAJO NATION.
She previously served as a faculty teacher for the Emerging Diné Writers' Institute at Navajo Technical University, where she taught Screenwriting classes.
Her recent acting credits include BARRY, MARVEL'S ECHO, SINGLE DRUNK FEMALE, STATION 19, PANHANDLE, and ECHOES. She played the lead in the theater production Diné Nishłį (I am a Sacred Being) or A Boarding School Play. Her voiceover work is featured in the PlayStation video game, THE FOGLANDS.
Before her career in Film/TV…
Sabrina earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from North Carolina State University before working in the tech industry in Silicon Valley. During her time there, she founded the Native American Employee Resource Organization and collaborated with Native American organizations on college campuses to create a pipeline for Indigenous talent.
Driven by a thirst for adventure, she all her belongings and spent five years traveling to every National Park in the US and Canada, capturing her journey in the documentary, The Story of US: A PBS American Portrait story.
She has dedicated several years to volunteering at Comfort Zone Camp, a grief camp for children. In her volunteer work and the stories she writes, she pays tribute to the memory of her late younger brother.
Publications
