About Sarita

Sarita West is a New Zealand-born filmmaker, producer, writer and cinematographer, and founder of Alchemy Films. Working across documentary, fiction and hybrid forms, her films explore the lives of people and communities navigating changing social, political and ecological worlds.

Her recent feature Overburden (2026) follows communities and wildlife in Liberia’s Nimba Mountains as renewed mining threatens a recovering landscape. The Waste Commons (2025) follows Dakar’s waste pickers as they confront enclosure and mechanisation that threaten their livelihoods. Earlier films include The Land Beneath Our Feet (2016), In the Shadow of Ebola (2014), Fire Burn Babylon (2010) and The Disenchanted Forest (2001). She is currently producing Outspoken, a feature documentary or series tracing rap’s journey from New York’s streets to voices around the world, connecting hip-hop’s original purpose with enduring oral traditions and place-based struggles for identity, justice and freedom.

She is credited as Sarita Siegel on her early career films.