New Delhi: Women filmmakers make up the majority of directors at New York’s first Muslim film festival. The inaugural edition will screen 12 short films from seven countries in Manhattan next week.
The one-day New York Muslim Film Festival will be held at the SVA Theatre on 11 October. The programme includes documentaries, dramas, comedies, and animated works by emerging Muslim filmmakers.
The festival was founded by director and producer Nawal Mubin and filmmaker Giuseppe de Matteis. Mubin told Variety that the aim was to create a space for Muslim filmmakers to tell their own stories.
“This festival exists because those stories deserve a stage in this city, not on the margins of someone else’s,” Mubin said.
Artistic director Hassan Babar said Muslim stories should not only exist as responses to how the community has been portrayed. “They should be the establishing paradigm,” he added.
Nominations, jury members
Among the films is Haram Salami, a comedy by Negine Jasmine Sekandari and Ayda Rojhantalab about three generations of Afghan women. Basma Khalifa’s Henna is about women and their relationship with the dye in different parts of the world. Maram Taibah’s Malika follows a grandmother and granddaughter in Saudi Arabia.
Sima Naseem’s My Friend in the Jingle Truck is set in Karachi, where a girl climbs into a decorated truck and meets a magical bird. Bilal Shams Khan’s Sabr O Shukr follows a 10-year-old boy who wants a bicycle.
Justin Mashouf’s $17.74 is about a man who has been in prison since the 1980s, whose support for Gaza gets attention outside jail. In Zaid Ahmed Hassan’s Ghusl, a dying father asks his son to learn Islamic burial rites. Unqualified, directed by Ilhan Abdullahi and Sherry Rashidan, is about a Muslim office worker who is asked to deal with a supposedly haunted lunchroom.
The festival’s six-member jury includes actor and comedian Aasif Mandvi, filmmaker Darine Hotait, Watermelon Pictures executive Munir Atalla, filmmaker Sarah Mokh, actor Abubakr Ali, and producer Abubakar Khan. Khan was a producer on The Glassworker, Pakistan’s submission to the Oscars in 2025.
Streaming service Watermelon+ is behind the festival’s Discovery Award. The winner will give Watermelon+ exclusive licence to stream the film for a limited period. Other festival partners include the Islamic Scholarship Fund, New York-based production house Lost in Space, and Aneesa Talks, founded by filmmaker Aneesa Khan to support South Asian and Muslim creatives.
The festival’s mission statement underlines the need for such an event.
“Muslims are a vast diaspora, comprising numerous identities and diverse lived experiences; therefore, there can’t just be one kind of Muslim story told.”
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)
Also read: Mona Singh looks for the X factor in every script she picks. From Jassi to Happy Patel