Batoota Films

Batoota Films recently moved to Beirut after 10 years of producing TV programs in London primarily for Al Jazeera English, Channel 4 and BBC World Service. In May 2009, Batoota Films started Shankaboot, the award winning world's first Arabic web drama produced in participation with the BBC World Service Trust. Katia Saleh, founder of Batoota Films, has previously produced and directed award-winning films, amongst them ‘Beirut: All Flights Cancelled' (2006) filmed for Al Jazeera English during the 2006 war in Lebanon, won Best Documentary at the Palermo Documentary Festival in Italy and 'Ashura: Blood and Beauty' (2005) a contemporary look on the 1300-year-old Shia ritual, also won Outstanding Short Film at the San Francisco Arab Film Festival and the 2007 Noor Award. Amongst her credits is the UK is the critically acclaimed Channel 4 Dispatches, 'Iraq: Women’s Stories' (2006) for which Katia has produced an hour documentary in Iraq and trained two Iraqi women to use digital cameras and document women’s everyday lives inside Iraq. She has traveled to Iraq twice to co-produce and film the Channel 4 documentary 'Return to Basra' (2003) and the ITV four-part documentary series 'Inside Saddam’s Iraq' (2003). She has also participated as Associate Producer in Jon Snow’s 'Iraq: The Hidden Story' (Channel 4, 2005) and 'John McCarthy's Return to Lebanon' (ITV 2004).