Sophia Allison

Sophia Nahli Allison is an Academy Award® nominated filmmaker, photographer, and artist.

As a black queer radical dreamer, she reimagines the archives by excavating hidden truths. A meditation of the spirit, her work conjures ancestral memories, mysticism, and abstraction to explore the intersection of fiction and non-fiction storytelling and world building.

Sophia was a 2020 United States Artists Fellow, a 2014 Chicago 3Arts Award recipient, and has been an artist-in-residence at Black Rock Senegal, MacDowell, The Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France., POV Spark’s African Interactive Art Residency, and The Center for Photography at Woodstock. She holds a Master’s degree in visual communication and a Bachelor’s degree in photojournalism.

Sophia received a 2021 Academy Award nomination for her short experimental documentary A Love Song For Latasha (2019), of which she was the director, cinematographer, editor, and a producer. She directed and co-wrote the 2021 HBO Max special Eyes On The Prize: Hallowed Ground. She is currently working on her ongoing self portrait series Dreaming Gave Us Wings and developing a dark comedy series with her creative partner.