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

The 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.

High profile celebrities like Benedict Cumberbatch and Jessica Chastain brought the glamour walking the red carpet, and immigrant talent at the festival did not disappoint either.

Surinamese-born Toronto-raised Khadijah Roberts-Abdullah co-directed, co-wrote and starred with Ethiopian-Canadian Araya 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 two brothers, one of whom is on the autism spectrum, Bhai is shot in black and white and managed to create a lot of buzz in the festival circuit.

In the acting department, Somali-Canadian, former supermodel Yasmin Warsame, made her acting debut in Finnish-Somali writer-director

Khadar Ayderus Ahmed’s The Gravedigger’s Wife. Warsame plays Nasra, the gravedigger’s wife, who is dying of kidney failure and is in desperate need of a transplant. Praised for her soulful performance, the film was one of three to be awarded with the Amplify Voices Award, given to films made by under-represented filmmakers.

Vancouver-based, Taiwanese-born actor, Eddie Peng also made a splash in the moody, thriller, Are You Lonesome Tonight.

Festival favourite

For Philippine-born and Nigeria-raised Shasha Nakhai, Scarborough, a festival favourite this year, has been an emotional ride. Four years in the making, Nakhai’s debut feature that she co-directed with Rich Williamson, was awarded the 2021 Changemaker Award, as a film that tackles issues of social change. The fact that the winning film is selected by TIFF’s Next Wave Committee, a group of young film lovers who recognize cinema’s power to transform the world, is significant to the director. The film was also declared first runner-up in the People’s Choice section.

“What makes me happy is that the film is hitting the mark emotionally and connecting people. We make films to move people and move them towards action. I am so happy that people in the Scarborough community, in the Filipino community, especially frontline workers and educators are loving it,” says Nakhai, an awardwinning documentary filmmaker whose work has been shortlisted at the Oscars.

Adapted from the critically acclaimed novel by Catherine Hernandez, Scarborough is a bleak yet uplifting story of three low-income families in the east Toronto suburb, struggling to survive in a system that has failed them. “The message of the film is so relevant, especially now that community has been and will be what gets us through all of the intersecting crises that we are dealing with right now,” she says.

An immigrant hub, Scarborough is a culturally diverse and colourful part of Toronto which boasts, of among other things, multicultural food and festivals like the AfroCarib fest and Tamil Fest. “Moving to Canada from Nigeria as an international student was very alienating, of course. For the longest time, I couldn't put my finger on what was missing in Canada. Over time I realised that it is just that feeling of community. That’s why I connected with Scarborough, the place, because it was one of the only places in the city where I could find Filipino restaurants or Nigerian food. It was the closest thing to home,” she recalls. expressing herself through dance was born out of Nakhai’s own experience of having family members immigrate as part of the Live-in Caregiver program. One of the main protagonists in Scarborough is Bing, a gay Filipino boy who finally finds his voice, and Nakhai’s hoping that more stories like this one are able to find their place on the big screen. “What drew me to the story of Scarborough was that even after having worked in Canadian film for over 10 years, I’d never seen anything like that, being Filipina, I’ve never seen that kind of representation before of the Filipino community. There are so many stories to be told. I just wanted to be part of making that happen in the Canadian film landscape,” she says.

Bold new voice

Another first feature that got critics talking was Pakistani-born, Swiss-raised Haya Waseem’s, Quickening. The coming-of-age story of a young Pakistani-Canadian woman who has to balance cultural expectations with desires of her own will resonate with immigrant families who have teenage children facing similar challenges.

For Waseem, many of the scenes in the film ring true as someone who immigrated to Canada when she was 16. “I was observing the changes around me and getting used to the new environment.

It was important for me to tell this story because no one in my community was making movies that I could relate to. There was nothing out there which tackled issues of identity or finding balance being both Pakistani and Canadian in an in-depth manner,” she says.

Waseem was also lucky to find her lead character, Sheila, in young Arooj Azeem who immigrated from Pakistan at the age of five. In the film, Sheila goes through the complex motions of her first relationship, relating to the nuances of her Pakistani culture, fitting in with her peers and dealing with her relationship with her parents who have their own struggles with settling in Canada.

Waseem hopes that audiences will relate to the message about family and community. “Canada is welcoming but you want to cherish the people you came here with as well. People that you love and who care about you, they stay by you. And as long as you stay with each other and try to move through a moment, however challenging, you can handle those moments together,” she says.

above Directors Shasha Nakhai and Rich Williamson working with Liam Diaz (Bing) and Essence Fox (Sylvie)