Ian Iqbal Rashid (born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania) is a poet, screenwriter and filmmaker known in particular for his volumes of poetry, for the TV series Sort Of and This Life and the feature films Touch of Pink and How She Move.

Of Indian ancestry and raised in the Ismaili Muslim faith, Rashid's family lived in colonial East Africa for generations.

[1] Rashid began his career as an arts journalist, critic, curator, and events programmer, particularly focussed on South Asian diasporic, Muslim and LGBTQ cultural work.

He then won a bursary to attend a prestigious BBC writing internship programme Black Screen and soon after started working in film and television as a screenwriter, director and producer.

[5] For BBC's Woman's Hour Programme, Rashid wrote and directed Leaving Normal, a comedy serial about same-sex adoption starring Imelda Staunton and Meera Syal.

[13] Since then, Rashid has written for broadcasters and companies such as Showtime, Lionsgate, Amazon Prime Video, ITV (TV network) and Sphere Media.

It premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival to great acclaim,[19] a bidding war, and eventually, a sale to Sony Picture Classics.

In the late 1980s, Rashid was a regular contributor to the Canadian LGBT magazine Rites, and the cultural journals Fuse and TSAR Publications.

[citation needed] He was selected as one of 2010's Breakthrough Brits on the prestigious UK Film Council (BFI) programme alongside Riz Ahmed, Yann Demange, Daniel Kaluuya and others.

[36] His film and TV career began when he won a place on the prestigious BBC internship scheme Black Screen, alongside writers such as playwright Tanika Gupta.