Dr Myriam Francois is a journalist,
filmmaker and writer.
Myriam’s award-winning, directorial debut documentary “Finding Alaa” (BBC/CBC 2023), under her production company MPWR productions, won the “Special Mention” Award at Doc Fest’23 and “Best Short” at the Independent Shorts Festival, So-Cal, USA film awards. The film has been BAFTA Longlisted as “Best Short Film” 2024. The film premiered at Hot Docs and the Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo. The film was shortlisted for the 2021Whickers Awards and the Cannes MIPDOC 2022 and has been selected at numerous festivals including BAFTA, Norwich Film Festival, SIMA awards, Cannes Shorts, Carmarthen Bay, Red Movies, Short Encounters, and more.
Myriam was nominated as one of only 14 “filmmakers to watch” in 2021 by One World Media
Myriam is the host and producer of Al Jazeera English series (2022), “France in Focus”, as part of its multi-award-winning strand “The Big Picture,” which won best series at the NY Film and TV Awards 2023.
Her most recent documentary for BBC World Service “Crossing Continents” strand “Singing Morocco's new identity” aired in 08/23 and her previous one “When rape becomes a crime” looked at rape laws in Senegal, aired on 26/05/2022.
PODCAST
In 2019, Myriam started the “We need to talk about whiteness” Podcast (iTunes/Spotify/Soundcloud) to pioneer conversations around structural whiteness in the UK. In 2021, the podcast was shortlisted the BBC Audio labs.
DOCUMENTARIES
In 2019, her documentary “City of Refuge” examined the plight of Syrian refugees in Lebanon, and aired on BBC Radio4 (April 2019) and BBC World service (May 2019).
Myriam is the presenter of BBC World Service documentaries on Brexit in Leave-voting town in Wales (Llanelli) (2019), and on #MeToo in the Muslim world (2018).
Her Channel 4 documentary “The Truth about Muslim marriage” (11/2017) was nominated for best investigative documentary in 2018 (AMA), as well as two BBC One documentaries, “The Muslim Pound” (aired 07/ 2016) and “A Deadly Warning: Srebrenica Revisited”, (aired 07/2015) which was nominated for the Sandford St Martin religious programming award 2016.
Myriam also developed, produced and presented a monthly Arts and Culture documentary series “Compass” for TRT world, a global news network on Sky 519 (2017-2018).
REPORTER
Myriam is a seasoned reporter, having reported for BBC World Service (2018), BBC London News (2019), and TRTWorld where she was Europe Correspondent for from 2015-2017, covering French politics, the migrant issue and Brexit. She has also produced several reports for BBC News at 6&10 including a France BLM special with Clive Myrie. (2021)
WRITER
A former columnist at the New Statesman, Myriam’s writing are featured widely in the British press, including the Guardian, TIME, Foreign Policy, the Telegraph, CNN online and Middle East Eye, among others.
Myriam is a former Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Policy (CGP think tank) 2019-2020, where she produced an in-depth report looking at the plight of European children of ISIS fighters in camps in Northern Syria, as well as an accompanying piece for Foreign Policy.
PRESENTING
Myriam is invited to deliver talks and lectures internationally, she has spoken at universities including Oxford, McGill and Harvard university, is a regular speaker and presenter at the “How the lights gets in” Hay-on-Wye and London festivals, Bradford Literary festival, the Battle of Ideas festival, WOMAD festival, the Audacious women’s festival and more.
She is also a regular presenter at high profile events, including the Brooklyn book festival 2020, the Mayor of London’s Eid Festival 2019 and the glamorous London Modest Fashion Festival 2018, among others.
In 2019, Myriam was a judge on the Baillie Gifford Prize for literature – a prestigious award for non-fiction.
BACKGROUND
Myriam is a former Research Associate at the Centre of Islamic Studies (CIS) at SOAS University. She completed her PhD (DPhil) at Oxford University, focusing on Islamic movements in Morocco in 2017. She holds an MA from Georgetown University (USA) and a BA from Cambridge university (UK).
She was nominated as part of the “40 under 40” European Young Leaders (EYLs) class of 2017.
Myriam was awarded ‘Woman in Media Award’ at the Muslim Women Awards 2021.
She tweets @MyriamFrancoisC
Instagram – myzfrancois
She can be contacted at: info@myriamfrancois.com