EXPLORING ENTRYWAYS INTO THE CANADIAN FILM INDUSTRY

Facilitated by: Safia Abdigir - Reelworld Screen Institute, Timaj Garad - Toronto Arts Council, and Marwa Siam Abdou - Director’s Guild of Canada

Thursday June 8, 6PM @ Goethe Institute

There are many entry ways into the film industry as an emerging filmmaker, whether you want to direct, write, produce or work below the line. This panel focuses on three particular Canadian institutions: Reelworld Institute, Toronto Arts Council and Director’s Guild of Canada. Representatives from each organization will outline the opportunities available to those who want to work in the industry and answer your questions about any of the programs they run.

Safia Abdigir is a Toronto-based arts culture worker specifically interested in the facilitation of diverse perspectives in the Canadian film/visual arts industry. Currently, she’s the Industry Programming Manager at the Reelworld Screen Institute, where she manages the programming of the film festival and runs the year long Producer Programs.

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 equityfocused initiatives and campaigns that amplify the voices of racialized members.

Timaj Garad is an Ethiopian-Harari Toronto-based multidisciplinary storyteller (poet, actress, singer-songwriter), arts educator, and community organizer. She works at Toronto Arts Council, where I develop and manage the Black Arts program for Black artists and Black-led organizations. She creates music with genre-bending mix of spoken word poetry, hip-hop, and R&B, soul, afro-jazz, and dance. In 2017, she founded LUMINOUS Fest, Canada’s first Black Muslim arts festival, and later co-founded The Sisters’ Retreat, a retreat series hosting arts-based wellness retreats for Muslim Women.

Thank you to our partners for this event: qumra. is an online and annual print journal focusing on film and media art, publishing writing from the SWANA (South West Asia and North Africa) / MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region and its diasporas. qumra is an Arabic word meaning bright light, particularly that reflecting off of the moon. In modern times it has come to refer to the camera obscura, partly due to similar phonetics, in recognition of early work done on the nature of light and the camera obscura by early thinkers in the region such as Ibn Sina (also known as Avicenna) and Ibn Al Haytham. We use this word in celebration of our shared heritage that often intersects and evolves across cultures, borders, and time.

You can purchase your copy at any of our Festival events or online at qumra.ca/shop qumra. is a collaboration between Toronto Arab Film Festival, MENA Film Festival, and SWANA Film Festival