Biography

Nilofar Pazira (Persian: نیلوفر پذیرا) is an Afghan-Canadian director, actress, journalist and author. Nelofer Pazira was born in 1973 in Hyderabad, India, where her Afghan father was then working with the World Health Organization. She grew up in Kabul, Afghanistan. She lived through ten years of Soviet occupation, before an extremely perilous escape to Pakistan with her family in 1989 at the age of 16. The following year the family immigrated to New Brunswick, Canada.In 2001 Nelofer established her own film company, Kandahar Films, and has directed a number of documentaries. She has been a jury member at a number of film festivals (including those of Locarno, Geneva, São Paulo, Edinburgh, and Montreal), and has worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in CBC Television and CBC Radio.

Nelofer holds a degree in Journalism and English Literature from Carleton University in Ottawa and a master's degree in Anthropology/Sociology and Religion from Concordia University in Montreal. She has also received an honorary doctorate of law from Carleton. Recently, she received an honorary doctorate of letters from Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia.

She is a frequent speaker at international conferences, as well as universities and colleges, including Carleton University and George Washington University, and was a keynote speaker at the Religion, Culture & Conflict symposium at Trinity Western University. Pazira defended Joseph Boyden's novel Three Day Road in Canada Reads 2006.

In 2006, Nelofer's memoir, A Bed of Red Flowers: In Search of My Afghanistan, was named winner of the Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize.