Sondos Shabayek is an Egyptian filmmaker, acting coach, Certified Intimacy Coordinator, and certified Mental Health Coordinator, based in Berlin. She is the recipient of the 2021 Voices That Matter scholarship – Women in Screen Industries, and holds an MA in Directing from the MetFilm School in Berlin.

With over 16 years of experience, Sondos has worked with actors and non-actors, facilitated storytelling workshops, documented personal narratives, and directed theatre performances centering women’s and gender-based stories. In 2022, she was selected for the Intimacy Coordinator Training Program by Safe Sets, funded by Netflix, and later completed her Mental Health Coordinator training for film and TV. She served as the intimacy coordinator for the German TV series Die Zweiflers, which won Best Series at Cannes in 2024 and is now airing on ARD. In 2025, she completed the Mental Health Coordinator professional training program, created and run by the Association of Mental Health Coordinators in and received her certification as well.

As an international intimacy and mental health coordinator, Sondos brings extensive experience working with survivors of sexual violence and creating safe spaces for sharing stories. She incorporates trauma-informed tools, somatic experiencing practices, and cultural sensitivity in her work, fostering safer sets for cast and crew and ensuring authentic storytelling on screen.

Her filmmaking focuses on truthful, nuanced portrayals of women’s lives, challenging the legacy of the male gaze and pushing for greater authenticity in representation. She is also committed to introducing intimacy coordination to the film and TV industry in the MENA region.
Sondos’s most recent short, Sousou’s TikTok, is a 10-minute dark comedy about a housewife secretly selling bridal products via TikTok Live behind her controlling husband’s back—until an unexpected interruption reveals deeper tensions. The film sheds light on domestic violence and the societal silence that surrounds it.

Her previous work includes She Said No (2023), a short about a cathartic moment between an Egyptian couple in Berlin, which screened at multiple festivals worldwide and won awards for Best Student Film, Best Director, and Best Actress; Girl (2013), an award-winning short on street harassment in Cairo, produced as part of the Women in New Egypt project; and The Night Before (2019), a Swedish-produced short exploring pre-bridal anxieties about sex.
Before working in film, Sondos was the director of The BuSSy Project, a performing arts initiative documenting gender-based stories for the stage. She also facilitated storytelling workshops internationally, developing a methodology for creating safe spaces where participants can share intimate narratives and transform them into powerful performances. This psychodramatic theatre practice deepened her understanding of the actor’s process and informed her human-centered, authenticity-driven approach to directing.

Transitioning from theatre to film, Sondos drew inspiration from Mike Leigh’s improvisational methods, developing her own screenwriting process in which stories and characters are co-created with actors through guided improvisation. She believes this collaborative process fosters boldness and authenticity on screen.
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Originally trained in broadcast journalism, Sondos worked in media for five years, focusing on personal narratives and social issues. Her passion remains the same: to tell women’s stories with honesty and depth, and to create space—on and off set—for those voices to be heard.

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From film set of 'Girl' - 2013 by Yehia El Zeiny

From 'Look at me' performance, 2013 - by Yehia El Zeiny

By Mohamad El-Hadidi