Interview: Nimco Sheikhaden & Sara Chishti Discuss New Short Film ‘Exodus’ [SXSW 2025]

Nimco Sheikhaden directs and co-produces Exodus with Sara Chishti, which is part of the Documentary Short Competition at SXSW. The short film recounts two women’s stories after incarceration, the difficulties they face, and the existential questions that haunt their minds and lives. In a recent interview with Jaylan Salah from Geek Vibes Nation, Nimco and Sara talk about funding women’s stories, choosing to shoot in Black & White, and showing the reality of people’s lives post-release.

Geek Vibes Nation (Jaylan Salah): What excited or interested you in this project?

Nimco Sheikhaden: I was trying to think of this film like a theoretical exercise titled: What does life after [incarceration] look like? My fiancé is currently incarcerated and it’s still a few years away until he comes home. So I wanted to interrogate what life is going to look like for him coming home. What is that journey going to entail? Because it was pretty abstract. I also think many films about incarceration often treat freedom as the end point. Like, this is what you’re going to arrive at. But the truth is that for a lot of people, it’s a starting point, and the struggle continues after it.

So [the film] was something that I wanted to journey towards and see, what does the day to day look like? What are the kinds of struggles that you will have to grapple with? The things that other people might turn away from are the kind of elements that we wanted to zero in on. At the bottom of it, we wanted to bear witness because it’s a verité film, so it requires a lot of patience and letting life unfold. It was a beautiful journey.

Sara Chishti: Many films focus on incarceration, but few ones focus on the journey of what happens after, and there are many systemic barriers to dignity and belonging following release. That’s why we wanted to make sure that that was the focus of both Trinity’s and Assia’s stories in Exodus.

GVN: How do you think financially supporting women’s storytelling helps change perceptions and create more opportunities for women to share diverse and important narratives?

SC: This is a great point. Many valuable stories don’t get made because of lack of funding and lack of access to funding. So for us, this project was independently made by people who supported our vision and were deeply connected to the issue of incarceration. We worked with a consulting producer named Sara Bennett, who spotlighted the stories of Trinity and Assia in a photo series prior, and we were fortunate to connect with people who had already invested in the topic of incarceration with a focus on women in that space. The biggest thing that I would advocate for other filmmakers is to connect with people who have already invested in your subject matter and have a commitment to the topics you’re tackling in your work. 

NS: The only thing I would add is how important it is to underscore the fact that [making the film] wasn’t easy. There were a lot of challenges and hurdles that we had to reckon with on this journey. Partly because of the unknown, how no one knew when we needed to stop filming. We didn’t have a precise end date and this required a willingness to accept the uncertainty within the journey. I’d like also to add that incarceration projects are tough. Unfortunately, sometimes people have certain check boxes that they want highlighted in the film and we were very intentional with how we wanted to tell the story. We didn’t want to harp on the crime and we wanted to censor them as people. We did not want to force them to continuously go back and self-flagellate. So it wasn’t easy, but I think when you have good intentions and an eagerness to tell an important story, you will find other kindred people who would support the journey.

GVN: How did you pick your two subjects [Assia and Trinity]?

NS: It was through a process. Sara mentioned the photo series that Sara Bennett did, which included all these beautiful photographs of several women. What we were eager to find, though, were people who were soon to come home or those who had come home somewhat recently. So Assia was home and her story was super interesting because she was deported following her release. So the immigration and the deportation aspects were important and critical to spotlight what it looks like for immigrant survivors who are being doubly punished. They don’t simply have to serve their sentence but also be separated from their families. [Assia] was never able to get the proper reunification with her kids or her mother. As for Trinity, Sara Bennett said that she was about to come home and we knew that she had gotten resentenced at that point under the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act, but we didn’t know exactly what her date of release would be, just that it was going to be soon and that was super helpful because it allowed us to potentially spot this journey. However, it required their willingness and both of them to see value in the representation of what [their incarceration and release] looks like. 

For Trinity specifically, because she served ten years, she was questioning, who knows me? What place am I gonna have in society? I’ve existed in the periphery for so long. So it was serendipitous seeing how eager she was to say something and be heard. And our film offered her that as an opportunity. They’re both incredible women and several of the women we spoke to were incredible as well.

There was a third woman that we were following who had served the full twenty-five years and was in her sixties. I wanted to show someone who didn’t benefit from a law like the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act, and what does that look like? But this is a short film, so we had to be realistic. It was more so trying to fit it within this framework that we had constructed. 

GVN: Was it intentional that you picked two unique women’s experiences; one as a daughter, the other as a mother?

NS: In the beginning, I had my mind made up of what the film could be, but we also had an openness of what it might become. It’s funny that I didn’t think about it in the beginning as a film about mothers and daughters. I was more interested in showcasing the systemic barriers and all the structural inadequacies [that met an incarcerated woman post-release]. Then it slowly became an interpersonal film about relationships, family, healing, and trying to rebuild relationships and connections. That was something we learned throughout the process of making the film. We started to see those parallels and I remember in an interview with Assia, she talked about the first time she saw Trinity at Bedford Hills and said, “The way I was looking at her was probably the way the other older women were looking at me when I first came in. Here’s this young baby face so how did she get herself here in this situation?” So it was interesting and helpful that they both knew each other and had a relationship that we were able to piece into the film.

SC: It’s something that evolved with the verité filmmaking we conducted. What makes it interesting is that they both [Assia and Trinity] embodied a spectrum of what the consequences of incarceration felt like and the ruptures that it had on family relationships —siblings, mother-daughter, daughter-child— and the relationship Trinity and Assia had with their broader community. Both of them embody how much work they have to embark on once they were released and how much relational repair they must try to pursue. 

NS: I also have to give a lot of credit to our wonderful editors, Sandrine and Skyler, because a lot of that happens in the edit room when you’re sitting down with your editor. Only then will you be able to draw the parallels where they diverge, but also where they connect. 

GVN: Did you decide on the Black and White look of the film from the beginning, or was this a discussion with the cinematographer?

NS: It was something that I made up my mind about [from the beginning]. However, throughout the process, there was the tug and pull of people who suggested it might look better in color, “You’re gonna be in Panama, which is such a colorful place. Why don’t you showcase the color? But it felt right. And it’s hard to kind of articulate that. But more than anything, it was like, we wanted to underscore the stark contrast and strip everything away so that you could just focus on the core of the story. There are very intimate moments that we’re bearing witness to in the film, such as some charged family conversations and reunions, and other moments where our DP is getting very up and close on their faces. That’s why I wanted to pull everything back to stay close to [those moments]. Our aim more than anything else was to bear witness to their journey. We want the audience to take all of the distractions away and just see those women.

GVN: What was it like to witness the subjects gradually open up and share more intimate moments in front of the camera? 

SC: It was such a privilege. Nimco and I met during the Eyes on the Prize series —the continuation of the original Henry Hampton series— and we started talking about the ideas we had. She had this idea that she wanted to give birth to in the world. That led us to connect with Sara Bennett, who introduced us to Trinity. At the time, Trinity was still incarcerated at Bedford Correctional Facility in Upstate New York, so we started corresponding with her sparsely while she was incarcerated. It was a special process because we saw in real time how both women expanded, confronted, and tackled things in their personal lives. Without giving too much away, many pivotal moments in the film were years in the making. It was a huge privilege to bear witness to that and be intimately involved in their stories.

GVN: How do you get your subject, an untrained actor, to open up and forget that the camera exists?

NS: Part of it was spending time beforehand. There has to be a lot that takes place in conversations before the camera even starts rolling. Not only are you asking them to be willing, but also asking their family members to participate. Keep in mind that media is a world that exists outside of most people’s minds and I worked with wonderful filmmakers from Geeta Gandbhir, who’s an executive producer, to Sam Pollard and Alex Gibney, so I got to see wonderful professionals [at work] and paid special attention throughout working on several projects. What helped was that they knew I had a personal connection to the issue, so innately we didn’t have to start book one, page one, but instead, we simply jumped ahead. 

I believe they understood that I cared deeply about the issue and wasn’t going to drop in and make any kind of film. I also wanted to impart on them that they had a right to participate in this process because this was a film that was shaping important aspects of their lives, and never feel like I have a 100% [final] say on things. They could participate and share an open feedback loop with me. It was a journey. My true aim was to empower them to know that they had a right to say no. If there was something that they were uncomfortable with or didn’t wanna show, I was more than happy to respect those boundaries. We also worked with the same small crew. They got to know our DP and our producer. We just connected through a lot of conversations. So marrying them into the journey enabled us to make the film the way we did. 

GVN: What was the most difficult scene to shoot?

NS: For me, it was the release day because there was such a huge question mark. The prison was trying to do all that they could to keep her in. Her little lawyers were, racing back and forth. It was a day. We went up to Bedford [Correctional Facility] one day because we thought this was the release day, but it didn’t work out. 

SC: We ended up having a four-hour drive, one way, so there was a lot of time invested.

NS: There were multiple logistical pieces that we had to figure out. So just figuring out all of that. On the other end, the same thing happened with Assia and her kids when they were getting in, we had to make sure that we got into Panama before they did, spend some time with Assia, and then film it. I think that when you have the willingness of the participants, things flow freely. But it was, you know, it was those were kind of some logistical pieces we had to figure out. 

SC: I’d say the same day because there was so much uncertainty with whether she was going to be released or whether the bureaucracy was going to throw a wrench. It was super tenuous and also very sensitive day. This is someone who was reentering the world and exiting Bedford after ten years. So we have to offer great sensitivity in that moment. A lot was going on, but I honestly think it was the commitment of Nimco and our crew to be flexible, commit to this process, and try to bear witness to this moment in the best way that we can as filmmakers.