CULTURE
IMMIGRANT DIRECTORS AND TALENT AT TIFF IMPRESS
above A still from Quickening
This year’s hybrid version had stand-out immigrant talent who brought forth timely and evocative stories that spoke to familiar themes of loneliness, isolation and the power of community By Baisakhi Roy
T
he organizers of the 46th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) managed to pull off a pretty successful event this year – in spite of being held under the cloud of the COVID-19 Delta variant. The first hybrid (a mix of in-person and digital screenings) festival, where attendees had to either show their proof of vaccination at a screening or a negative COVID test, showcased over 100 films and had more than 600 screenings at various venues across Toronto.
Mengesha in the political dark comedy, DEFUND, which premiered in the Short Cuts programme this year. Roberts-Abdullah and Mengesha play millennial twins, trapped in their apartment at the height of the 2020 pandemic watching the Black Lives Matter uprisings unfold on their phones.
Also featured in the Shorts section was Pakistani-born Canadian filmmaker Hamza Bangash’s stirring short, Bhai. A nuanced and sensitive portrayal of the bond between High profile celebrities like Benedict two brothers, one of whom is on the autism Cumberbatch and Jessica Chastain brought the spectrum, Bhai is shot in black and white and glamour walking the red carpet, and immigrant managed to create a lot of buzz in the festival circuit. talent at the festival did not disappoint either. In the acting department, Somali-Canadian, Surinamese-born Toronto-raised Khadijah Roberts-Abdullah co-directed, co-wrote former supermodel Yasmin Warsame, made her and starred with Ethiopian-Canadian Araya acting debut in Finnish-Somali writer-director
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CANADIAN IMMIGRANT Volume 18 Issue 5 | 2021
above Shasha Nakhai - Photo by Michael Ori
