While she was making her film, Sara Ishaq was thinking of posting it on YouTube. She thought that if she succeeded in showing her film on one of the big pan-Arab satellite channels, she would have scored a major goal.

It never occurred to the 29-year-old Yemeni-Scottish director that her film on the Yemeni revolution would take her even higher — all the way to the Oscars in Los Angeles, the first Yemeni ever and one of few Arabs to reach that stage.

“I was not expecting the film to enter any festival,” says Ishaq in an interview with tabloid!. “We wanted to make a film and post it on YouTube so everybody would know about what was happening in Yemen,” she added.

So when she received emails from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organisers of the Oscars, she thought it was spam and deleted them — more than once.

Ishaq’s film, Karamah Has No Walls (Dignity Has No Walls) was shortlisted for the short documentaries category at the annual film awards.

Many things about Ishaq’s film on the revolution, that erupted in February 2011, were unexpected. The idea was not planned, the footage was shot in an unusual manner and the filming and editing took longer than anticipated.

But her determination and enthusiasm helped achieved the extraordinary.

Born to a Yemeni merchant and a Scottish former nursery owner, Ishaq was born in Scotland and moved to Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, aged two. At 18 she moved back to Scotland to obtain her bachelor’s degree in political and social sciences from the University of Edinburgh. In early 2010, she spent some time in the occupied Palestinian territories taking part in protests and filming the agony of the Palestinians as a result of Israeli policies and measures, before returning to Scotland.

“I realised that my passion is with filmmaking, especially documentaries,” she said. She returned to university and three years later she received her masters in filmmaking from Edinburgh University.

The idea of going back to Yemen to make a film surfaced shortly after she joined the masters programme. It became her graduation project.

“Everybody was amazed to know that I have Yemeni roots. They always wonder how my life in Yemen looked when I was a child, how I was raised, and how my relations with my family [are]. They repeatedly suggested I should go back to Yemen and make a film about my family’s lives.

“In November 2010, I decided to make the film. I bought the ticket and booked a flight on February 18, 2011.”

But that was the time when the Arab Spring started, and revolutions erupted in Tunisia, Egypt and later, Yemen.

“When I arrived in Yemen, the revolution had already started, either on the same day or the day after,” Ishaq said.

Massive rallies calling for better economic conditions were being held in many cities and they later called for an end to the rule of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. At the beginning, Ishaq was filming her family’s daily life at home.

Usually, “I am active and take part in rallies whether I am in the UK or US or Palestine. So what do you think my position would be in my own country, when my countrymen are calling for justice and freedom?”

But her family objected.

“They [father and grandfather] said ‘you will be in a dangerous situation because you are a woman’. They were concerned from both a social perspective and security perspectives.” But she didn’t give up. Her paternal aunt and her cousin were with her when she joined the rallies.

On March 14, the eve of what Yemenis called “Karamah [dignity] Friday”, Sara saw the writing on the wall. The road blocks were alarming. She and many others felt something was going to happen, but couldn’t put a finger on it. Her family asked her not to join rallies so she was filming at home and watching the news on television. That Friday, scores of Yemenis were killed by snipers.

As her family members responded to calls to donate blood, her own relations with activists and doctors in the field clinic started to grow. She also played the role of a citizen journalist when the BBC started to interview her almost on a daily basis on the developments.

“I met people and I tried to document their testimonies to both radio and television. I felt that the topic needed more documentation and I could make it the focus of a film.”

Two young men, Ameen Al Gaberi and Abdul Rahman Hussain, helped with filming and interviewing relatives of citizens who had been shot. She also met two young men, aged 16 and 23, who were filming on the frontlines and giving their material to a local television station.

“I asked them, ‘what are you planning to do with all the material you own?’

“‘We don’t know’, they replied, adding that the channel they were giving the material to used only a few seconds, and that they had hours of footage.”

Within 10 days the team had finished filming.

Ishaq stayed in Yemen for three months trying to produce it, but with no luck. She returned to Scotland with two film topics, and nearly 100 hours of footage; about 30 hours of film on the revolution and nearly 70 hours on her family, titled The Mulberry House.

Ishaq felt enthusiastic about the first one, though her university was more interested in the second one. They were more interested in “artistic documentaries” rather than “journalistic documentaries”, she said.

Dubai’s Hot Spot films, a broadcasting media company, helped in finishing the film on the revolution, and Ishaq started focusing on showing it in festivals, starting with the One World human rights festival, then the Glasgow Film Festival, the Arab Film Festival in San Francisco, and the Edindox film festival in Edinburgh, which actually put it on the way to the Oscars by winning an award.

“They [the Oscars] contacted me, but I never responded because it never occurred to my mind that the film would reach that stage. I deleted the emails believing they were spam.” She was contacted by one of the festivals she took part in, inquiring about Oscars communications.

It was almost the deadline and she had to send 50 DVD copies to decide whether the movie would make it to the shortlist. She was still sceptical, but her friends argued “you won’t lose anything”.

Again, contrary to her thoughts, the half-an-hour film made it to the shortlist.

The film took nine months to complete with a cost of nearly $100,000 (Dh367,000). She is now preparing to make her third film, in which she will be co-producer and co-writer.

But she has a bigger dream: “To go back to Yemen and open a filmmaking academy. There are many talents in Yemen, but not too much encouragement.”