Biographies

DIRECTOR, PRODUCER, RESEARCHER — OJALÁ SUPIERAS

Dr. Mariam Saada is a mother, professor, researcher, lecturer, and screenwriter. She was born in Paris and is multilingual in French, Arabic, English, Spanish, and Portuguese. She holds a Ph.D. in Spanish Historical Linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles, and earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Spanish from California State University, Los Angeles.

Her academic career has been devoted to uncovering the connections between the Arab-Islamic world and Hispanic civilization. In 2016, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Mexico, where she examined Arabic and Islamic documentary traces in Colonial Mexico (1570–1820) across seventeen archives throughout the country. She is the author of ¡Allah! ¡Hashem! ¡Dios! El español no es tan español published by Editorial Dunken, Buenos Aires, 2019. She has also published nine academic articles in specialized journals.

Dr. Saada is also the director of the forthcoming documentary (her first film), Ojalá Supieras (I Wish You Knew), a visually immersive work that unearths the silenced history of Islam in Colonial Mexico. Through archival manuscripts, dramatizations of Inquisition trials, and historical testimonies, the film gives voice to men and women accused of crypto-Islam and persecuted for their faith. More than a film, it is an act of historical reclamation—reconfiguring Mexico’s national narrative by revealing how Muslims, Jews, Christians, and Indigenous peoples all contributed to the nation’s foundations.

Her work—both academic and cinematic—opens new pathways for understanding cultural memory, offering audiences a deeper vision of how erased histories continue to shape our present. By recovering these hidden voices, Dr. Saada creates a space for dialogue among disciplines, religions, and cultures, reminding us that history is not static but alive—and that the echoes of past struggles for dignity, identity, and faith still resonate in our time.