Niki Kohandel

Niki Kohandel

My practice explores language, cross-media translation and fragmented memories. My illustrations and films draw on family histories and anecdotes, inscribing personal experiences within broader narratives of belonging and resistance.

Niki Kohandel (b. 2000, Paris) is an artist, filmmaker and facilitator based in London. Her practice sits in the space between recording and rewriting a story. She works in collaboration with family members, friends and young people, playing with languages, analogue film, childhood memories and colours. In 2021, she co-founded Shahre Farang, a collective supporting children and young people who have newly arrived in the UK through multi-disciplinary story-telling sessions.

Her films have been shown in group screenings and exhibitions, at LUX, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Anthology Film Archives, ICA London, Metroland Studios, Cubitt Gallery and online through Another Screen. Her last shorts were included in programmes as part of the BFI London Film Festival, Open City Documentary Festival, Istanbul Documentary Days, London Short Film Festival and Aesthetica Short Film Festival amongst others.

A departure

Video / 02:00 / 2025

'A departure' begins with a question: how do we navigate on disappearing rivers, seas, sources, bodies of water endangered by neo-colonial extraction? The film responds to the call of Sohrab Sepehri's poem 'Beyond the Seas' and invites the viewers to build their own paper boat.

Commissioned by Open City Documentary Film Festival for the 2025 festival trailer.

Minevissam (I am writing)

HD Video / 18:00 min / 2022

02:00 min excerpt

Minevissam maps the journeys of various characters, whose pasts continue to echo through other times and places. As they search for better words and worlds, a poet, a painter and an owl attempt to translate their tales for and with each other.

The Sparrow is Free

HD Video / 14:00 min / 2021

02:05 min excerpt

In an empty house, a young woman hears a voice. The tales it evokes lead her to recreate scenes from her grandmother’s past life.

Albalo

Video / 02:20 min / 2021

01:13 min excerpt

What happened when a doll swallowed a cherry pit...