A groundbreaking cultural event is set to make its debut in Manhattan, offering a powerful rebuttal to the flattened and stereotyped imagery that Western media outlets have historically trafficked in regarding Muslim communities. Opening on October 11 at the prestigious SVA Theatre, the New York Muslim Film Festival (NYMFF) proudly bills itself as the city’s very first film showcase dedicated entirely to centering Muslim filmmakers and empowering them to tell their own authentic stories.
Organizers behind the ambitious one-day event envision a profound shift in how these narratives are received by global audiences. Hassan Babar, the festival’s artistic director, emphasized that stories created by Muslim filmmakers should not merely serve as defensive counter-narratives responding to outside misconceptions. Instead, Babar asserted that these perspectives should stand firmly on their own as the establishing paradigm for modern cinema and cultural storytelling.
The festival’s inaugural program packs a robust punch into a single day, featuring a curated selection of 12 short films hailing from seven different countries. The lineup reflects a diverse array of cinematic forms, bringing together documentaries, intense dramas, lighthearted comedies, inventive animation, and boundary-pushing experimental pieces. Notably, women filmmakers make up a clear majority of the directors showcased in the program, highlighting a powerful female creative leadership driving these vital conversations.
Nawal Mubin, the co-founder and director of the festival, articulated the driving philosophy behind the new cultural fixture in New York City. She noted that the festival exists precisely because these stories deserve a prominent stage right in the heart of a major metropolitan hub, rather than being relegated to the cultural margins of someone else’s defining narrative.
The packed itinerary for the day is designed to foster both community and professional networking. It opens with an exclusive reception welcoming participating filmmakers and prominent industry guests. This will be followed by two distinct screening blocks, each consisting of six films running roughly an hour apiece. The day will culminate in a celebratory awards ceremony and the official announcement of the jury’s decisions.
A Star-Studded Jury and Industry Support
To evaluate the impressive slate of submissions, NYMFF has assembled a high-profile, six-member jury featuring some of the most respected creative voices working in film and television today. Emmy Award winner Aasif Mandvi, a familiar face to television audiences from his longtime tenure as a correspondent on “The Daily Show” and his starring role in the Paramount+ series “Evil,” lends his considerable expertise to the panel.
Mandvi is joined by an accomplished roster of industry professionals, including Arab-American writer-director Darine Hotait, the founder of Cinephilia Productions whose thought-provoking shorts have aired on major platforms such as HBO, AMC, SundanceTV, and the BBC. Munir Atalla, the head of production and acquisitions at Watermelon Pictures and a former creative executive at Netflix, also brings his strategic industry eye to the jury room. They are rounded out by producer Abubakar Khan, whose impressive resume includes “The Glassworker”—Pakistan’s official entry for the 2024 Academy Awards—and the SXSW 2023 audience award winner “Mustache.”
Completing the distinguished panel are Lebanese-American filmmaker Sarah Mokh, a Sundance Feature Film Fellow who recently wrapped production on her debut feature, “The Alchemy of Being Okay” (which Khan is producing), and rising Egyptian-American actor Abubakr Ali. Ali has a series of high-profile projects on the horizon, including roles in Bassam Tariq’s “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother,” starring opposite Mahershala Ali, and Sean Durkin’s A24 film “Deep Cuts.” He was also recently seen on screen in Kathryn Bigelow’s “A House of Dynamite.”
Strong institutional backing has also materialized for the festival’s launch. The streamer Watermelon+ is sponsoring the Watermelon+ Discovery Award. The winner of this accolade—whether an individual filmmaker or a rights holder—will be granted an exclusive license by the platform to stream their film for a limited period. Additional vital partnerships have been secured with the Islamic Scholarship Fund, New York-based production and post-production house Lost in Space, and Aneesa Talks, an initiative founded by filmmaker Aneesa Khan specifically to champion South Asian and Muslim creatives.
A Diverse Cinematic Landscape
The festival’s program spans an extraordinary range of tones, genres, and geographic settings, proving the vast breadth of contemporary Muslim cinema. Justin Mashouf’s documentary “$17.74” offers a deeply personal look inside the carceral system, following a former gang member behind bars since the 1980s whose simple gesture of solidarity for Gaza from within prison unexpectedly sparked a viral wave of global awareness.
In Karim Emara’s Qatar-U.S. dramedy “Baba Is Melting,” familial tension takes center stage when a son calls his father—who is waiting in a car just before Friday prayer in Doha—to confront him about a concealed second marriage. Zaid Ahmed Hassan’s short “Ghusl” explores poignant generational bonds, centering on a son whose dying father asks him to learn traditional Islamic burial rites. Meanwhile, Basma Khalifa’s experimental U.K. piece “Henna” creatively traces the biological life cycle of the henna plant alongside the lives of women from 16 African and SWANA countries.
Animation is also represented through Sima Naseem’s Canada-Pakistan co-production “My Friend in the Jingle Truck,” which blends stop-motion and 2D animation techniques to tell the magical story of a young girl in Karachi who encounters an extraordinary bird. Alex Aljouni’s “Bukra” follows a young Syrian refugee who wins a soccer ball in a sweepstakes and races frantically to collect it in order to play one final match with her best friend before he departs for good.
Family dynamics and cultural expectations drive several other notable selections. Negine Jasmine Sekandari and Ayda Rojhantalab’s comedy “Haram Salami” shows three generations of Afghan women navigating an audacious move that reopens old rifts as they weigh individual desires against custom and tradition. Maram Taibah’s Saudi fantasy “Malika” dives into magical realism, exploring a young girl’s relationship with her grandmother and the internal tug-of-war between youthful wildness and societal expectations of obedience. In Bilal Shams Khan’s Pakistani drama “Sabr O Shukar,” a 10-year-old boy named Akram learns profound lessons about patience and gratitude while desperately chasing his dream of owning a bicycle.
The lineup continues to surprise with Imran J. Khan’s “The Boy With Dinosaur Head,” which captures a memorable encounter between a troubled boy who is convinced he is a dinosaur and a teacher determined to drag him back to conventional reality. Ilhan Abdullahi and Sherry Rashidan’s Canadian comedy “Unqualified” tracks Warsan, the sole Muslim employee at her workplace, who is tasked with spiritually cleansing a supposedly haunted office lunchroom, forcing her to rely on her faith and a series of humorous misunderstandings to save her job.
Rounding out the cinematic offerings is Lyna Tadount and Sofian Chouaib’s French drama “Ya Hanouni,” which centers on two parents engaged in a lighthearted competition to see whose name will be their baby’s first spoken word—a playful contest that is abruptly cut short by a life-altering event.
Behind the scenes, the festival’s organizational framework is anchored by dedicated creative leadership. Hassan Babar, a Toronto-based actor and producer, co-heads programming alongside Aneesa Khan, who also oversees communications. Nawal Mubin, a New York-based director and producer, co-founded the festival alongside filmmaker and post-production specialist Giuseppe de Matteis, with both Mubin and de Matteis maintaining professional ties to Lost in Space as the festival prepares to welcome audiences to its historic first year.
