Sosena Solomon

Solomon performed at our May 2026 Seriously Entertaining show “Safeguarding the Irreplaceable,” in collaboration with World Monuments Fund (WMF).

Sosena Solomon is an award-winning Ethiopian American social documentary filmmaker and multimedia visual artist whose work centers on culture, identity, and communities in transition. She has been a director and cinematographer on many commercial and nonprofit projects, including Dreaming of Jerusalem, a Discovery+ original documentary about the Ethiopian Jewish community in Gondar, and MERKATO, filmed on location in one of Africa’s largest open-air markets and exhibited internationally as an audio, visual, and sensory installation. Her work has been shown at the Sundance Film Festival, Cinema Africa, and DOC NYC, and has been featured in The New Yorker, Artforum, ARTNews, Forbes Africa, and Essence. Her most recent work is Africa’s Cultural Landmarks, a documentary series she directed for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, commissioned in collaboration with World Monuments Fund. Filmed across 12 countries, the series documents the preservation of heritage landmarks across sub-Saharan Africa. She is a 2025 Pew Fellow and a lecturer in cinema and media studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches courses in documentary filmmaking, cultural preservation, and public engagement.