Idil Ibrahim
is an award-winning writer and director. She grew up in movie theaters, and she's since worked in twenty countries across five continents, in scripted television, film, documentary and branded work. What holds the work together is people. Her practice begins with trust, which is how she enters a place, directs performers who have never been on camera, and comes back with work that feels lived rather than observed.
She co-wrote Camel on a Stick for Apple TV+'s Little America with showrunner Lee Eisenberg and served as a consulting producer on the show, sharing a Humanitas Prize nomination. In 2025 she shadowed the producing director on the series finale of CBS's The Equalizer.
Sega, which she wrote, directed and produced in Dakar, played the International Competition at Clermont-Ferrand and won the Jury Award for Best Short Narrative at BlackStar, the Golden Dhow at the Zanzibar International Film Festival and Best Short Film at Cinémas d'Afrique. Canal+ acquired it for Europe and Africa. It has since screened in Rio de Janeiro and Salvador, and had its first gallery showing at OH Gallery in Dakar.
She directed In Her Element in Nashville for Queen Latifah's Queen Collective, produced by Tribeca Studios, Flavor Unit and P&G. It premiered on BET and won the Reel South Award at the Nashville Film Festival. In 2026 she directed a commercial in a national campaign for a Fortune 500, shot in Cape Town. She has directed in Uganda, Malawi, Kenya, Somalia, Senegal, South Africa, Barbuda, Nashville and Los Angeles.
Her producing work runs further still. She's creative produced in England, the Netherlands, France, Morocco, Mali and Japan, and produced in Grenada, Zambia, Cuba and across the United States, from Silicon Valley to Cajun Country. She was an associate producer on Americana, which screened at Cinéma du Réel and Morelia, and produced on African Metropolis, funded by the Hubert Bals Fund and the Goethe-Institut, which played the Toronto International Film Festival and premiered in Europe at Rotterdam. She's an executive producer on Call of the Jab.
Her photographs appear in Everyday Africa and MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora, and one was published in Vogue.
She's a TIFF Writers' Studio alum, a recipient of the CHANEL Women Writers' Network grant through Share Her Journey, a 2024 SFFILM Rainin Fellow and a 2025 finalist for the AFI Directing Workshop for Women. She's been named to OkayAfrica's 100 Women and received the Emily Rosenthal Award at the 92nd Street Y's Extraordinary Women Awards, for exceptional educational and creative contributions to the community. She studied at UC Berkeley and NYU, and works from Los Angeles.
Awards
2017 Emily Rosenthal Award, Extraordinary Women Awards, 92nd Street Y
Reel South Short Film Award at Nashville Film Festival
Jury Award, Best Short Narrative, BlackStar Film Festival
OkayAfrica's #100AfricanWomen of 2018
2024 SFFILM Rainin Fellow
2020 Outstanding Content Creator, New York Women in Film and Television (NYWIFT)
2023 Humanitas Prize Nominee, Little America
Golden Dhow, Best Short Film, Zanzibar International Film Festival
CHANEL Women Writers’ Network Grant, Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) Writers’ Studio
2025 Finalist, AFI Directing Workshop for Women
Best Short Film, Cinémas d’Afrique