About

Sonya Dagata is a Swiss-Tunisian-American director, screenwriter, and photographer based in Brooklyn, NY. Her style is defined by a fraught relationship with identity, a commitment to fiction-based storytelling, and stylized, conceptual photography. She gravitates toward paradox, dark comedy, and the absurd and seeks out beauty in darkness and vice versa, both on the page and through the lens.

Sonya studied screenwriting and directing at the Prague Film School, where she developed her thesis film, And Then God Laughed. The 27-minute short went on to win Best Thesis Film at PFS and competed internationally at numerous festivals.

She currently has a feature film and a short film in development. The feature, written under the mentorship of Ghalya Lacroix (Blue is the Warmest Color, The Secret of the Grain) and co-written with Alexandra Debricon, was selected for the Groupe Ouest international film lab in Brittany, France (2024). For more information on these projects, contact info@sonyadagata.com.

In the meantime, based in Brooklyn, she works as a freelance photographer and director, collaborating mainly with independent artists, while also photographing behind the scenes with Radio Music Hall’s Rockettes, for Madison Square Garden Productions.

Notable festivals:

  • Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival (Bafta and Oscar qualifying)

  • Miami Short Film Festival

  • FilmQuest - WINNER: Best Comedy Short

  • Feratum Film Festival - WINNER: Best International Short.

  • Splat!FilmFest - Méliès d’Argent Official Contender

  • Lund International Fantastic Film Festival 

  • Macabro: International Horror Film Festival of Mexico City

  • Caostica Bilbao

Sonya has worked in New York, Mexico City, Prague, Paris, and Tunis. She works in English, French, and Spanish and writes in English and French.