A Palestinian-Canadian, born and raised in Jordan, freelance photojournalist and filmmaker Annie Sakkab is based in Canada and the Middle East. As a visual storyteller, Annie is drawn to explore the customs, lifestyles, and values that characterize her subjects. Annie seeks long-form narrative with a focus on women’s issues and social justice. With her work, she raises questions of identity and awareness of the experiences of exile, uprooting, and displacement among marginalized groups. Her long term project, ‘A Familiar Stranger,’ challenges contemporary western views and constructs of Middle Eastern women, and raises larger questions of how we perceive repression and freedom.
Her work is published in Canadian and International medias including The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, Bloomberg News and NBC News, and worked for various organizations such as United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Mercy Corps and Danish Refugee Council (DRC).
A graduate of Loyalist College in Photojournalism and a participant in the Missouri Photo Workshop in 2014, Eddie Adams Workshop in 2017, Hot Docs Accelerator Emerging Filmmaker Lab in 2019, and Montreal International Documentary Festival Talent Lab in 2019, Annie won the News Photographers Association of Canada (NPAC) NPOY Student photographer of The Year Award (2015), CPOY College Photographer of the Year Award: Award of Excellence in Portraiture (2015), and the NPAC 1st Place Feature Photo (2016), among other awards. Annie’s work has also been recognized by Ontario Newspaper Awards, Ontario Community Newspapers Association, and Loyalist College faculty for commitment to and proficiency in editorial portraiture, documentary photojournalism and storytelling.
Annie is also a member of Muse Projects and Women Photograph, and a board member of True North Photo Journal.