Zola Studios was founded by Basma Khalifa and Alya Mooro after the pair came together to work on their debut documentary and realised they were driven by the same ethos; a desire to bring these cross-cultural stories to life and a recognition that working in community to build community was the key to success. They decided to combine their skills to empower themselves and the next generation of storytellers.
Grown by two powerful, experienced, multi- hyphenate, third-culture creatives who come from Egypt and Sudan and have both been working for a decade across disciplines, ZOLA is passionate about telling representative stories of the SWANA (South West Asia and North africa) region and beyond.

“We believe that it's important to own your narrative and to be empowered to create from an authentic place; that honest storytelling facilitates community-building and cross-cultural understanding. With an obvious gap of stories in the market from North Africa, The Gulf and South West Asia - despite there being over 2 billion people from the region and many more in the diaspora - we have turned our attention to facilitating opportunities for ourselves and others to tell these stories.”

We are excited to come together to tell these stories across mediums, and build a community of like-minded creatives, keen to learn, teach and connect from across the globe.

It's time to take back our narratives, one story at a time.

Basma & Alya xo