Sahar Meradji

About Sahar Meradji

Sahar Meradji is a documentary maker. Her series have a wide reach and are characterized by their raw, close-to-life nature; you are always there. Sahar closely connects with the people she films. This results in intimate and often confronting documentaries that not only inform viewers but also make them reflect on how they perceive certain groups or issues.

At the age of five, Sahar moved to the Netherlands with her mother, where she grew up in Leiden. Sahar’s upbringing is focused on performance and discipline; at a young age, she reads Shakespeare and Nietzsche and is trained by her mother in the art of reasoning. In 2010, she graduated from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam with a Master of Arts in Literature Studies.

Sahar makes human interest documentaries, focusing on socially complex themes such as right-wing extremism and Islam. As an interviewer, she is known for her ability to explore sensitive and explosive issues in an unbiased, direct, yet empathetic and accessible manner.

When I want to understand something, I must not judge it in advance.

After creating three series together with Tygo Gernandt, including ‘Tygo in de GHB’, Sahar launched her own documentary series ‘Verdoofd’ in 2020, in which she follows four individuals addicted to alcohol and/or drugs, showing that addiction is primarily a numbing of underlying pain. She won the NPO Start Award in the category of ‘most streamed documentary series of 2020’ with this work. This was followed by series such as ‘Seksengelen’, ‘Verloren Kinderen’, ‘Ik Woke van Jou’, and ‘Eigen Volk Eerst’. Her latest work was released in early 2025; ‘Moslims’. In this series, Sahar follows various practicing Muslims in the Netherlands in their daily lives, questioning the relationship between Islamic and Western values.

Sahar’s major inspiration is Hannah Arendt’s theory of the ‘banality of evil’. Sahar sees the world as layered and often logically emotional; there is no ultimate good or ultimate evil, as all human actions are merely a convergence of history, intention, and context. To accept each other and live peacefully alongside one another, we must first understand each other, and in a democracy, dialogue is our only weapon. This principle forms the core of all the documentaries Sahar makes, as well as her lectures and other public expressions as a speaker. Her approach is interactive, honest, open, incisive, fearlessly direct, and always human and integral.

The subjects Sahar specializes in are always approached from the human side, beyond the numbers. She does this based on her professional experience, personal experiences, and the knowledge she has gained during her studies.