Marwa Siam Abdou is a film director, a writer and freelance journalist. She is currently the National Outreach manager at the Directors Guild of Canada, a union representing members in the areas of direction, design, production and editing in the country. At the Guild, she oversees and manages equity-focused initiatives and campaigns that amplify the voices of racialized members. Her professional and creative work align, as she is also focused on portraying and telling the stories of people of colour, and particularly women, in her films.
BIOS//سير
May Telmissany
May Telmissany is Associate professor of Cinema and Arabic Studies in the Department of Communication, University of Ottawa. She is the former Director of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, and founder of the Arab Canadian Studies Research Group (ACANS). She is an established novelist and columnist as well as the author of numerous academic books including La Hara dans le Cinéma Egyptien. Popular neighborhood and national identity, and Counterpoints. Edward Said’s Legacy. Her scholarly articles are published in English, French and Arabic in France, the UK, the USA, Canada, and Egypt.
Telmissany’s research spans a variety of topics in media and film theories including the representation of the popular neighborhood in cinema, the emergence of minor cinemas and women transnational filmmaking, the political contributions of the diasporic women intellectuals during and after the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, and the impact of SVOD platforms on Arab countries and the Francophonie.
As a novelist, she published four novels and four short stories collections many of which were translated into several languages.
Telmissany won two literary awards, in Egypt and in France, and was recently awarded the prestigious medal of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres of the French Republic, in recognition of her literary and academic achievements.
Mervat Aksoy
Mervat Aksoy is a Jordanian producer who has worked on a variety of projects, both regional and international. She began working at The Royal Film Commission in 2003, which helped develop her passion for the local film industry. Originally a graphic designer, media production and content creation felt like a natural progression to her skills and interests. She graduated from the Red Sea Institute of Cinematic Arts in 2010 and since then has gone on to produce local film, television, and web content. Her notable projects include the award-winning narrative feature A 7 Hour Difference, part of the RFC EduFeature program, and two seasons of the Jordanian television and web comedy show Bath Bayakha. Since 2020, she has been working as a Development Producer for platforms based in the UAE.
Milada Kovacova
Milada Kovacova started as a painter but now makes films and curates. She holds several degrees including a BFA in Film Production from Concordia University. While studying at Concordia, she was awarded the Mel Hoppenheim Award for Outstanding Overall Achievement in the Film Production Program. Her films have shown locally and internationally.
Moe Rai
After finishing his studies at the University of Toronto, and graduating with an honors bachelor in Computer Science and Mathematics, Moe Rai decided to dive into his passion of filmmaking.
He graduated from the Toronto Film School with honors in Film Production and gathered a vast experience in TV & Film Production, Marketing, Advertising, Training and Coaching.
Rai had the privilege of working with great Canadian and International talent, taking roles such as Line Producer and Production Manager for several features, shorts, commercials and new media projects, while working with the industry’s key players and major companies
A strong believer of knowledge transfer, Moe grew his second passion in training youth to develop their soft, business and media skills in order to develop their communities.
His passion of creating positive change was developed by collaborating with several local and international NGO’s such as Junior Chamber International and United Nation.
Mohamed Nabil
Mohamed Nabil grew up in Morocco, where he studied philosophy and pedagogy. For four years he taught philosophy and social sciences at the high school in Morocco before immigrating to Canada in 2001. There he studied journalism and political science in Quebec and Film Studies in Montreal. In 2005 he shot his first university short film in Canada: “Philosopher”. Since 2006, Mohamed Nabil lives in Berlin and works as a freelance journalist, artist and filmmaker. In 2009, he founded the production company Mia Paradies Productions, together with Eva Leonardi. “Women’s Dreams”, a film about German women converted to Islam, was his first documentary in 2010 and had a lot of success. The documentary “Jewels of grief” about single mothers in Morocco made in 2013 is the first part of a film trilogy about women in Morocco. It was shown on several international film festivals around the world as well as on BBC World Arabic television.
Mostafa Abd El Meguid
Mostafa Abd El Meguid is an Egyptian-Canadian engineer working in e-commerce. This comes following a long stint in the global broadcast and content distribution industry that now gives him a unique perspective on the intersection of technology and media. He currently resides in Toronto, via Cairo and Kuwait, with an extended stop along the way in Montreal for university.
Mostafa is passionate about the health and well-being of his local community, believing that strong grassroots organisations are essential to the thriving of the societies they call home. To that end, he served on the board of directors at YMCA Canada, where he worked to support the mission to promote healthy living, community engagement, and youth development. In his spare time, Mostafa enjoys running, ultimate frisbee, trivia and consuming pop culture (not necessarily in that order).
Mounia Akl
Mounia Akl is a director and writer from Lebanon living between Beirut and New York. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Architecture from ALBA and an MFA in Directing from Columbia University and is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences®. Her first feature film, Costa Brava Lebanon (Sundance Labs, Cannes Residency), premiered in 2021 at the Venice Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival (Netpac Award) and BFI London Film Festival (Audience Award) amongst others. It was inspired by her short film Submarine (Official selection at the 69th Cannes Film Festival, TIFF 2016). Apart from directing, Mounia has also taught a lab in Directing at Columbia University, New York, and directing at the NHSI film summer institute at Northwestern University, Chicago. Mounia is currently developing new projects (TV and Film) between Paris, Beirut and LA where she also was recently a Ted Talk Women speaker.
Mouwafak Chourbagui
Mouwafak Chourbagui is an Egyptian-Lebanese festival programmer and writer based in Cairo, Egypt. He first stumbled into the cinema industry by working with a French director on a 2011 documentary about Egyptian Shaabi music for Arte. He has since then worked as a programmer with Zawya, one of the first art-house cinemas in Egypt, as well as with the El Gouna Film Festival.
Muriel Kahwagi
Muriel Kahwagi works across writing, research, and programming. Her work has appeared in Rusted Radishes, Cold Cuts, and Kalimat. Her first edited volume, The real and imagined histories of sung poetry, supported by the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, was published in November 2022. Featuring contributions from scholars, artists, and musicians, the project explores the relationship between oral history and the (physical) archive; and the mediation and transmission of memories and folkloric traditions.
Nahed Mansour
Nahed Mansour is a Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist, curator, programmer, and arts-administrator. She currently serves as the Curator of Programs and Education at the Gardiner Museum and.has previously held curatorial positions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto, South Asian Visual Art Centre, and Mayworks Festival. She holds an MFA in Open Media from Concordia University and a BA joint Honours in Semiotics and Visual Studies from the University of Toronto.
Nashwa Lina Khan
Nashwa Lina Khan is a community educator, facilitator, and researcher. She is also a writer and poet and occasionally dabbles in installation and archive that uses narrative methodologies. She holds a Masters of Environmental Studies from York University with areas of concentration focused on narrative methodologies, community and public health, refugee, and forced migration studies and is currently a PhD student at York University in Environment and Urban Change. Her work has been published in a variety of places including Vice, Rewire, This Magazine, and The New York Times. She is the host and producer of two podcasts, Muslim Rumspringa and Habibti Please.
Nehal El-Hadi
Nehal El-Hadi investigates the relationships between the body (racialised, gendered), place (urban, virtual), and technology (internet, health).
She completed a Ph.D. in Planning at the University of Toronto, where her research examined the relationships between user-generated content and everyday public urban life.
As a scholar, her hybrid digital/material research methods are informed by her training and experience as a science and environmental journalist.
Nehal advocates for the responsible, accountable, and ethical treatment of user-generated content in the fields of journalism, planning, and healthcare.
Her writing has appeared in academic journals, general scholarship publications, literary magazines, and several anthologies and edited collections.
Nehal is the Science+Technology Editor at The Conversation Canada, an academic news site, and Editor-in-Chief of Studio Magazine, a biannual print publication dedicated to contemporary Canadian craft and design. She currently holds a residency at Toronto’s Theatre Centre, where she is developing a live arts event that explores surveillance, privacy, and consent.
Nehal sits on the Board of Directors of FiXT POINT Arts & Media and Provocation Ideas Festival. She is a member of the Digital Communities Advisory Panel at the Centre for Free Expression. She was previously a Visiting Scholar at the City Institute at York University.
Nisreen Baker
Nisreen Baker is a director, producer and screenwriter who has been working in the film industry for over 20 years, collaborating with local and international talents and broadcasters to create multilingual films that promote multiculturalism, give voice to underrepresented and marginalized communities, and explore cultural identity and sociopolitical issues. Her passion for these topics stems from her exposure to different cultures, religions and societies, having lived in six different countries around the world, and having first-hand experience with social and political turmoil.
Nisreen’s 2023 feature documentary, Arab Women Say What?! is a radical contemplation on politics, identity and home, unfolding through the provocative conversations, hospitality and openness of a group of Arab-Canadian women. Her pervious film Things Arab Men Say depicts a group of Arab men at a barbershop getting haircuts and shaves, while debating various issues, and expressing often-surprising views with deft humor. The documentary earned four ROSIE Awards nominations (Director, Producer, Screenwriter, Editor). Both documentaries were produced by the National Film Board of Canada. Her other work includes Women of Karaoun which premiered at Calgary International Film Festival, is about three generations of Lebanese women in Canada, and Cultural Competency, which follows four immigrant families and one Canadian family as they navigate the challenges encountered in Canada.
Noor Gatih
Noor Gatih is an Iraqi filmmaker and photographer based in Toronto. Her practice explores gender and generational patterns within family archives, film, and photography, and her work has been exhibited at Collusion Books, Gallery 44, Wave Art Collective and Gallery 1265. Recently, she was selected for a 2021 mentorship opportunity at Made In Her Image (hosted by Panavision), an organization that provides training and resources for women of colour pursuing a career in film production.
Omar Elhamy
Omar Elhamy was born and raised in Egypt. Established in Quebec, Canada for a few years now, he is a director, writer and editor. His films have been acclaimed in several festivals and art galleries. He directed Tartarus (2019), Paria (2015). In 2018-2019 he presented Five seasons behind the sun his first expanded cinema works at the Dazibao Gallery in Montreal. Foam (2020), his latest short film, is part of the International Short film Competition at the 70th Berlinale. He is currently working on his first feature film, Frère Raison.
Rand Abou Fakher
Rand Abou-Fakher studied as a flutist in the Syrian Conservatory, broadening her practice in Brussels to audiovisual arts. Today, she works as a director, theatre actor, (art) project manager and programmer. Her short films Braided Love (2018) and So We Live (2020) have been shown at festivals and museums worldwide. In the process, So We Live won an Oscar Qualifying Award.
Riaz Mehmood
Riaz Mehmood is a multidisciplinary artist who uses video, photography, and computer programming as his primary means of expression. His practice often visits themes of multiple and fluid identities, geographical, psychological, and cultural displacement, magic realism, and the development of knowledge. His ancestral home is a small village located between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mehmood immigrated to Canada in 2000 as a professional engineer and decided to pursue a career in the arts. Mehmood holds an MFA from the University of Windsor (2012) and completed the Integrated Media program at the Ontario College of Art and Design (2005). He has participated in several international and national artist residencies and workshops, and has earned numerous grants, scholarships, and awards over the years. Mehmood has also been involved with several artist-run centres, and served on the boards of SAVAC (Toronto) and articule (Montréal). He is currently on the Board of Directors of Latitude 53. His works have been shown nationally and internationally, including most recently at the Art Gallery of Alberta in the solo exhibition Ghazal—Songs for Home.
Robert Abboud
Robert Abboud is an Audio-Visual Director (Film, TV, Immersive Experiences) with a demonstrated history of working in the media and entertainment industry for over a decade, including 4+ years in creative interactive education. He directed the highly acclaimed one-take film “A Cold Morning in November”, which was screened at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival and awarded with the two best fiction awards from the Franco Arab Film Festival in Paris. Created visuals for VIPs like the Pope’s visit to Jordan, WEF, Doctors Without Borders, The Doctors TV Show – CBS, Al Jazeera America and UNIFOR Canada.
Rolla Tahir
Rolla Tahir is a filmmaker and director of photography based in Toronto. She’s lensed short, narrative and experimental films, which screened across Canada and internationally, including the UK, Germany, and the United States. Obsessed with the durability, longevity and spontaneity of the analog film medium, Rolla has worked with Super 8, 16mm and 35mm to explore the analog process and its possibilities.