Maria-Saroja Ponnambalam, Canada, 2014, 60 min, in English Pandi, an Indian filmmaker moved to Canada to forge a career in film, his greatest passion. The film combines narration, video footage that Pandi shot, animated scenes from his script and intimate interviews with his family members to illust

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 Nahid Persson Sarvestani, Sweden/Norway/UK, 2013, 75 min, in Swedish and Farsi with English subtitles Winner, Rotterdam International FF, Audience Choice Award; Stockholm Tempo Doc Festival, Best Documentary Toronto Premiere A student activist in Iran’s 1979 revolution that overthrew the dictato

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Darine Hotait, USA, 2015, 14 min, in English and Arabic with English subtitles Winner, Special Award, Women Media Arts and Film Festival, Sydney, Australia, 2015 Canadian Premiere An Arab-American take on identity in a diaspora context Hal, an Arab-American poet belonging to the Pales:nian diaspora

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Tor Iben, Germany, 2015, 79 min, in German with English Subtitles  Toronto Premiere   WHERE ARE YOU GOING, HABIBI is a buddy movie about an unlikely friendship. Ibrahim, young, gay, and Turkish, falls in love with Ali, a wrestler and criminal, German and straight. A kind of love story develops bet

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Mitra Farahani, France / USA, 2013, 96 min, In Farsi with English subtitles Winner, Best Film, Buenos Aires International Festival, 2014; SCAM Award, Cinéma du Réel, 2013 Toronto Premiere Mitra Farahani’s lyrical documentary explores the enigma of provocative artist Bahman Mohassess, the so-call

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Bruno Lazaro, Canada/Spain, 2014, 95 min, in English Canadian Premiere “Forever is a good word.” Eryka travels to Spain from the African Sahrawi refugee camps where she has been shooting a documentary. On arriving she discovers that her boyfriend, Marc, has vanished hang-gliding over the ocean.

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Ester Amrami, Germany, 2014, 87 min, in German, English, Hebrew, Yiddish, with English subtitles Winner, Dialogue en Perspective Award, Berlin FF 2014; Independent Cinema Award, Karlovy Vary FF 2014; Best Fiction, Potsdam Sehsüchte 2014; Audience Award, RiverRun International Film Festival 2015 C

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Lila Yomtoob, USA, 2014, 14 min, in English and Farsi, with English subtitles International Premiere In November 1979, a group of young Iranian revolutionaries took 63 hostages at the American Embassy in Tehran. This event echoed daily on television sets across America for 15 months, and soon enough

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Mikko Kuparinen, Finland / Lithuania, 2015, 84 min, English/French/Finish with English Subtitles Toronto Premier Sexual content and nudity. 18 Years and over. A French architect, Caroline (Marie-Josée Croze), in Vilnius, Lithuania on business, has to spend an extra night in the city due to an ash c

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Anna Fahr, Canada, 2014, 18 min, Toronto Premiere, in Arabic with English Subtitles (Precedes Silvered Water – Syria Self-Portrait) In the northern mountains of Lebanon, a Syrian man hoping to reunite with family torn apart by war encounters two Palestinian children whose own stories of exile pro

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Every year, Diaspora in Short showcases short films by talented diasporic filmmakers. This year, we havefive films made by Iraqi young filmmakers and one by an Iranian-Canadian   Children of God Ahmed Yassin, UK/The Netherlands, 2013, 10 min, in Arabic with English Subtitles A young amputee boy

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