Academy Award winning filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy has won the 2018 Eliasson Global Leadership Prize awarded by The Tällberg Foundation in New York.

The filmmaker and activist, who have previously won accolades for highlighting social issues through the medium of film, is the first Pakistani to win the prestigious award.

The award recognizes Sharmeen as arguably one of the most articulate global storytellers of her generation. “Her film work aims at bringing attention to issues that societies find deeply uncomfortable to acknowledge, and then telling stories in ways that are compelling enough to impact on the underlying social and human distress.”

The jury selected Sharmeen because of her “increasingly insistent and effective leadership not just in changing minds, but in addressing the facts that create outcomes that should be unacceptable."

Sharmeen’s filmography is extensive as since 2000 she has made more than a dozen multi-award winning films in over 10 countries. Among her films is Saving Face (2012), A Journey of a Thousand Miles: Peacekeepers (2015) and A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness (2015).