Nelufar Hedayat

The 2010 television documentary Women, Weddings, War and Me, directed by Ruhi Hamid,[12] follows Hedayat as she returns to her homeland for the first time since leaving some 15 years earlier. She returned to Afghanistan to discover how the lives of women in Afghanistan had changed with the fall of the Taliban. She later said "I met with women who had been so defeated by a patriarchal society, they thought of themselves as second-class citizens. I found a world of extreme violence against them, where they were traded like animals – not treated as human beings. Girls were in prison for trying to escape abusive marriages. I cried with these women, tried to understand them and to comfort them. ...I came back to the UK knowing that I had changed. I was humbled by my experience, but there was an ever stronger feeling of thankfulness to my mother, who had saved me from such suffering."[13]

The documentary was shown on BBC Three from 2 March 2010. It also aired in Australia on ABC on 17 May 2010 and it has received largely positive reviews,[14] while scoring the highest audience approval rating for a documentary on any channel ever reported.[15] The documentary has gone on to win the Broadcast Digital Award for Best Current Affairs' Programme.[16]

In this BBC Three documentary aired in 2011, Hedayat explores the world of hip-hop music video girls. She meets young women in the UK seeking careers as hip-hop models both in the UK and the US, but falling victim to financial and sexual exploitation.[17]

In her 2014 début for Channel 4's Unreported World series, Hedayat went to uncover the secret world of the dog meat trade in Vietnam. Millions of dogs are killed every year to satisfy the demand for the meat. Often pets are stolen from homes because the demand is so high and police officers can do little but fine the thieves.[18] Hedayat finds trucks crammed full of hundreds of dogs hungry and vomiting after being force-fed rice on the way to Hanoi's dog meat only restaurants and meets the village that murdered the thieves plaguing them. Hedayat worked on the film with director Daniel Bogado.[19]

In her first eight-part documentary series, Hedayat investigates traffickers and illicit markets around the world, uncovering vast criminal networks enabled by middle men and corruption.[5] For her work on the series, she won the 2017 Reporter/Correspondent Gracie Award (presented by the Alliance for Women in Media),[20] and was named Journalist of the Year at the Asian Media Awards.[21][22]