happy pictures
SISTERHOOD SOFTBALL
In 2023, seven short docs were commissioned for the second series of Citizen Minutes. They will have their world premieres at the 30th anniversary edition of the Hot Docs Festival, April 27 to May 7.
Following the first all-female Muslim softball league in North America, Sisterhood Softball depicts a league that empowers women through sports in a community where women traditionally don't participate and are seen as disempowered by those outside of their communities.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT:
Sisterhood Softball is a film about perseverance and the strength of a community to empower women. This documentary follows the only all-women Muslim softball league in North America and seeks to showcase the inspiring stories of Muslim women who have overcome societal barriers and personal challenges to pursue their passion for sports.
The film shows us a pathway to create change for the individual and the broader community exploring how these women break stereotypes and redefine what it means to be a Muslim woman in sports. We aim to highlight their resilience as they navigate their faith and cultural expectations.
By creating nuanced and rich depictions of underrepresented communities, I hope to build interest in these stories and ensure our film reaches and is accessible to the communities depicted. While it deals with one league's specifics, it tells a community's universal story. Sisterhood Softball will tell inspiring stories of ordinary Muslim women doing extraordinary things to make their communities better places, showing us the power of sisterhood to change communities and our perceptions.
Video Funeral
Lam, a Vietnamese international student, welcomes her younger sister, Phuong, to her Chicago apartment. Phuong brings a DVD of their father’s funeral, which Lam could not attend.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT:
I once had a dream with my Dad in it. In the dream, I was only five or six, and I was crying. In the dream, Dad took me on his shoulders and walked through the entire city, trying to calm me down, even though he had no idea why I was crying. In real life, I never sat on my father’s shoulders, I always thought if either me or my sister got to sit on his shoulders, it would have been my sister, because he loved her more than he did me.
My father passed away in 2014 of lung cancer, after a lifetime of smoking. Right before that, my parents sent me to the States for college. The entire time when he was sick, I was away, and I couldn’t attend his funeral when he passed. I felt tremendous pain and loneliness at the time, since I had nobody to talk to about it, and I was very much isolated from my entire family. I wished I could have traded places with my sister.
A few times since my father’s passing, when I was at home, I’d ask my mother where she kept the DVD of his funeral. In the safe, she’d say, then asked me if I wanted it. I always refused, scared of opening up old wounds. It took me a lot of courage to recently ask her for the DVD again. This time, I sat down and watched it.
When I asked my sister what it was like when Dad was sick, she said she didn’t get to interact with him much at all. She said it was bad. She didn’t have anyone to talk to, and spent most of her time outside of school with her dog. It turned out that our experiences didn’t differ much from each other. Had I known how cathartic this conversation would be, we would have had it way sooner. It was like we never really understood each other until now. Video Funeral is very much based on this experience and this conversation between me and my sister. It is a film about grief and the healing power of familial connection.
My Father’s Name
A young man struggles to navigate the troubled relationship with his estranged father, and his father's other family.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT:
My Father's Name is a film that draws from my own family; as a result, it deeply reflects my feelings about parental love and neglect. For Nadir, sometimes growing up means recognizing the complexities of your world and, in his case, the intricacies of the relationship with his absent father, feelings of abandonment, and a disconnect from his Somali culture.
Paralleling my experiences growing up in Canada as a 1.5-generation immigrant, I also explore themes of assimilation and identity throughout the film. You can lose people to war in more than one way; you can lose connection and family ties to the living. As an artist and filmmaker, I want to capture the nuances of picking up the pieces after the dust settles.
‘My Father’s Name’ is a story of resettlement not only from one nationality to another but also in your relationships; a universal dilemma we all experience as we age. Many of the questions I'm exploring in this film, and my other works, look at how the human experience (while it can be complicated by issues of race, class, and migration) has universal experiences that can inform how we see each other.
Here the specifics matter, the war matters, and the forces of separation matter. But still, individuals make choices. Nadir gets one of the biggest lessons about adulthood; your parents are just other people doing their best.
Green Pools
When her mother dies, Khadra embarks on a journey to bring her nephew Sammy to the funeral.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT:
At our innermost selves, our child's heart, all loss is death. There we must find comfort in dealing with the loss of loved ones. How does one make sense of abandonment and rejection? How do we mourn, heal pain, and find comfort? What is the role of ritual? For the child's heart within, there is no road map. In this film, I want to explore what it takes to reconcile loss without the defences of adulthood.
For Sammy, growing up means seeing the intricacies of the relationship with his absent mother. Like the algae of green pool, these characters overflow with unprocessed emotions. How do you foster the emotional safety of discussing abandonment? How do you make a family whole after there's been a rift?
In the end, all we can do is stand beside the graves in our hearts and mourn.
MAN GOES
A Somalian man walks from the United States to Canada to seek asylum.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT:
With my first film, I wanted to explore what it feels like to resettle after leaving your beloved country.
Mangoes is a heart-wrenching and timeless story about Mohamed Adle, a Somalian immigrant who embarks on a journey from the United States to Canada to seek asylum.
With the hope of getting a new and better life in Canada, Mohammed walks across the border alone under North America's harsh and snowy winter. Throughout the journey, he struggles with internal and external challenges.