Film Categories: Diaspora

  • En Memoria

    In a dystopian future, a mother struggles to finish making her daughter’s quinceañera dress.

  • Omar, What’s Good? (شو، يا عمر؟)

    Sho Ya Omar? (Omar, what’s good?) is a found footage experimental documentary that deconstructs the public persona of Egyptian actor Omar Sharif, to retell the story of his rise to fame and subsequent fall. This visual archaeological project re-appropriates a series of fiction films that star Sharif and intercuts them with news footage, archival materials, interviews and television programs to reflect on particular moments in Sharif’s career. The film reveals, using a process of deconstructing the found footage, the colonial context and mindset that shaped Sharif’s life between the Middle East and America..

  • I would like to visit

    An experimental short and installation work that combines text and film to explore the simple desire to travel, through the cultural and political realities of being Palestinian. Soundtracked with the anxiety of disposition, the work opts to show a close up of text being typed and edited on word-processing software, the work complicates a simple desire to travel by adding to it the social, cultural and political realities of being a Palestinian.

  • P is for Palestine

    Language is political in this subtle short film that shows an unnamed man in Amman, Jordan repeating decontextualized political English words all include the letter P – a letter that doesn’t exist in the Arabic language and pronouncing it is coded socially and economically.

  • Don’t Take My Joy Away

    In the Shatila Palestinian camp in Lebanon, two friends, Omar and Omar, find moments of joy amid hardship until sudden violence forces them to confront loss and survival.

  • Sultana’s reign

    Sultana of New York is a Palestinian drag queen, performer, and artist. “Sultana’s Rein” opens with a conversation with Sultana, as she is being painted by Jordanian artist, RIDIKKULUZ. Reflecting on her journey from Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, to then New York, Sultana tells of the challenges of performing drag in conservative societies, her nostalgia for the glory days and the glamour of Egyptian cinema icons, and her struggle to prove her existence and her self-expression as a performer and artist. She also shares her love of celebration and her everlasting commitment to be true to herself.

  • Baba Bahram, Look at the Flowers

    Baba Bahram, Look at the Flowers is an experimental short film built from archival footage recorded in Tehran by the artist’s younger brother, Reza, at the age of seven. Holding the camera with playful authority, he roams through their family home, garden, and streets, capturing everyday moments with a sense of wonder and instinct. The footage is addressed directly to their grandfather, Baba Bahram, creating an improvised cinematic letter between generations. The film reflects on intergenerational bonds, memory, and the aesthetics of untrained seeing. Meaning emerges through gesture, movement, and relation. Weaving together personal history with a meditative observational form,…

  • Aunt Harriet

    Aunt Harriet is a meditative moving portrait exploring introspection, healing, and aging. Set against the backdrop of rural Ontario it deepens the memory of Black lives, bridging past and present – history and myth.

  • MixedUP

    Part testimonial/part confessional. What are the lines between the facts of who I am and the fiction of what I can become? Mixed↑ is a reclaimed book of genesis: a manifesto that collides the wildly diverse elements of being queer, mixed and different in a world socialized around the construction of race, gender and orientation. Mixed↑ follows Howard J Davis aka Haui in his feature film directing debut, as he combats the isolation of being BIPOC and LGTBQ+ and helps to normalize the existence of being “other”. Featuring Haui’s biological and found family including: actress/activist Tantoo Cardinal; stage and screen…

  • The Flower and The Flood

    Following the seasonal cycle of a saffron farm based in the Fraser Valley, the film explores unmechanized labor through harvesting the delicate crocus stamen by hand. After an atmospheric river decimates the flourishing saffron crop in 2021, the flood waters temporarily return Semá:th Xó:tsa to the valley more than a century after its forced draining. The film traces the interconnected history of this sacred lake with the rebuilding of the saffron crop; cultivating community and the most expensive spice in the world. Collaborating with the saffron crocus and other plants through eco-processing and analogue processes, the family garden offers us…