Suzannah Mirghani is a Sudanese-Russian writer, researcher, and media studies/museum studies graduate. She is the writer, director, and producer of AL-SIT (2020), which won 48 awards, including the Canal+ Award at the 2021 Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival, and 6 Academy Award qualifying prizes at Tampere Film Festival; LA Shorts; BronzeLens; New Orleans Film Festival; AFI Fest; and Interfilm Berlin. Her social media satire VIRTUAL VOICE (2021) premiered at Tribeca Film Festival; and KAMALA IBRAHIM ISHAG: STATES OF ONENESS (2022) was commissioned by the Serpentine Galleries. Suzannah's poem “Some Behavioral Characteristics of the Sudanese Honey Bee (Apis mellifera sudanensis)” was published in the Black SWANA issue of Mizna 23, no. 2 (2023). Her first feature film, COTTON QUEEN, won the 2022 ArteKino Award at L’Atelier de la Cinéfondation at the Cannes Film Festival, and, in 2025, premiered at the Venice Film Festival; won Best International Film at Thessaloniki Film Festival (2025); Audience Award at Doha Film Festival (2025); TV5 Award for Best First Film at Carthage Film Festival (2025); Grand Prix (Fiction) at Geneva International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights (FIFDH) (2026); Jury Award for Best Film at Luxor African Film Festival (2026); and Jury Award for Emerging Filmmaker at Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival (MSPIFF) (2026).