Ghazaleh Golbakhsh

Co-founder, Waking Dream Collective

Ghazaleh is an Iranian-New Zealand writer and filmmaker based in Auckland.   She is one of the co-founders of the Waking Dream Collective (www.wakingdream.co.nz) which aims to support and encourage diversity onscreen.

Ghazaleh has an MA (with First Class Hons) in Documentary from the University of Auckland where her thesis film on Iran premiered in Israel and won the Outstanding Student Film Award in Beijing.   Awarded a Fulbright scholarship, she studied post-graduate film production and screenwriting at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.  There she started an internship at the Sundance Institute and continues to work for them still.  She was also elected as the co-chair for the Women of Cinematic Arts Student Board.

Ghazaleh has also trained as an actor and hopes to combine these skills with her writing and directing.  Her first feature script was shortlisted for the Sundance Screenwriter’s Lab in January 2014 and reached the Top 10% in the prestigious Academy Nicholl’s Fellowship in 2014.  In In 2015 it was selected for the Writer’s Lab Aotearoa run by Script-to-Screen and received development funding through the 48+ Writer’s Programme.

She has also started her PhD with Creative Practice at the University of Auckland after receiving the Doctoral Scholarship and lectures part time at the Media Design School in Auckland.