In May of 2022, Zarqa Nawaz, creator of CBC’s ‘Little Mosque on the Prairie’ and the upcoming CBC Gem web series, ‘ZARQA’ discussed the importance of ‘Changing the Muslim Narrative’ with Writers, Directors, and Performers over three live-stream sessions.
with Nida Manzoor
with Nijla Mu’min, Lena Khan and Iman Zawahry
with Bilal Baig, Travina Springer and Aden Abebe
More about Nida
Nida Manzoor is a British television and film writer and director. Best known for creating, directing and writing the Channel 4 comedy series We Are Lady Parts, Manzoor has received multiple accolades including winning the Writer: Comedy BAFTA TV Craft Award alongside the 2021 Rose d’Or Emerging Talent Award and a nomination for the Broadcasting Press Guild Breakthrough Award and RTS Programme Award for Best Writer (Comedy).
Manzoor’s We Are Lady Parts and the main character’s journey were inspired by her own personal experiences navigating questions of identity and feelings of “otherness”. Her desire was to create a show that centred a group of funny, determined young Muslim women with real agency and complexity, like the ones she knows. The series is certified 100% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics hailing the show’s infectious energy, great songs and magnetic cast.
Manzoor began her film career working as a runner and made her directing debut on the first series of BBC Three’s Enterprice in 2018 and was subsequently awarded a RTS Craft & Design Award for Best Director (Comedy Drama). Following this, in 2019 she directed two episodes of Doctor Who titled ‘Fugitive of the Judoon’ and ‘Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror’. Manzoor has recently wrapped production on her debut feature film Polite Society, with Working Title and Focus Features. The film is an action-comedy which follows a bolshy school girl and martial artist-in-training who dreams of becoming a world-renowned stunt woman.
More about Nijla
Nijla Mu’min is a writer and filmmaker from the East Bay Area. Her work is informed by poetry, photography, fiction, and dance. Named one of 25 New Faces of Independent Film by Filmmaker Magazine in 2017, she tells stories about Black girls and women who find themselves between worlds and identities.
Her short films have screened at festivals across the country. Her filmmaking and screenwriting have been supported by the Sundance Institute, IFP, Film Independent, Women In Film LA, and the Princess Grace Foundation. In 2011, she worked as a Production Assistant on Ava DuVernay’s film, Middle of Nowhere. In 2014, she was selected for the Sundance Institute Screenwriters Intensive, and she was the winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Screenplay at the 2014 Urbanworld Film Festival, for her script Noor. Nijla attended the 2017 Sundance Institute Sound and Music Design Lab for Jinn. Her short film Dream was acquired by Issa Rae Productions for online streaming in 2017.
Her debut feature film, Jinn, starring Zoe Renee, Kelvin Harrison Jr., and Simone Missick, premiered at the 2018 South By Southwest Film Festival, where she won the Special Jury Recognition Award for Screenwriting. In 2018, she directed an episode of Ava DuVernay’s critically-acclaimed series “Queen Sugar.” Jinn, a New York Times Critic’s pick, was released in November 2018 by Orion Classics, and is currently streaming on Amazon. She’s also written for the upcoming Apple series, “Swagger,” and the Starz show “Blindspotting”. In 2019, she received the Shadow & Act Rising Award, the MPAC Media Award for Courage and Conscience, and joined the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She directed an episode of HBO’s “Insecure” in 2019, and she recently directed the episode of “Swagger” that she wrote. She also wrote and directed a short film for Netflix, entitled Black Prom, which is currently streaming on Netflix’s Strong Black Lead Instagram page, and on Youtube. In 2021, she directed an episode of “Wu-Tang: An American Saga” for Hulu. She is currently developing her second feature film, Mosswood Park. She is a 2013 dual-degree graduate of CalArts MFA Film Directing and Creative Writing Programs.
More about Lena
Lena is a writer and director. Her first feature film, THE TIGER HUNTER, released in over 70 cities nationwide and garnered effusively positive reviews. Fresh off of its release, Disney tapped Lena to direct FLORA AND ULYSSES, a live action family comedy 40 times the budget of her first film, that released this year and was among the top streamed movies in the world for multiple weeks. In the past few years, Lena has sold two shows and recently entered television directing, working on shows ranging from multiple episodes of “Never Have I Ever” to “The Mysterious Benedict Society.” She is now working on several feature and television projects, including producing a show for Disney+ where she will helm the pilot, a CGI-filled live action studio comedy with Spyglass, and a feature passion project she is incredibly excited about.
More about Iman
Iman Zawahry is one of the first hijabi American-Muslim filmmakers in the nation. She has worked on numerous films that have played at over 100 venues worldwide. She’s an Emmy award winner, Princess Grace Award recipient, a Lincoln Center Artist Academy Fellow, and Sundance Momentum Fellow. She is also the co-creator of the first American Muslim film grant with Islamic Scholarship Fund where she currently serves as Director of Film Programs. Iman works to amplify the underrepresented female voice and frequently consults and speaks across the nation on Muslims in Film. Her debut film, Americanish, is currently touring the festival circuit and has won twenty-five awards, including best director and best film. She is currently faculty of film production at the University of Florida.
More about Bilal
Bilal Baig is a Canadian writer and actor. Baig is the co-creator, co-writer, and star of Sort Of, a CBC Television comedy series centering on a genderfluid character. Baig is the first queer South Asian Muslim actor to lead a Canadian primetime television series. The series premiered on CBC in 2021. Their play, Acha Bacha, centers on a non-binary Pakistani-Canadian person struggling to reconcile their gender with their Muslim upbringing. The play was staged in a joint production by Theatre Passe Muraille and Buddies in Bad Times in 2018.
More about Travina
Travina Springer is an actress and comedian based in Los Angeles, CA. This year, Travina will join the Marvel Universe appearing in Disney+ and Marvel Studios’ highly anticipated, brand-new series, Ms. Marvel. Additional credits for Travina include CBS’ Life in Pieces, Paramount+’s Strange Angel, and the Clint Eastwood helmed feature film, The Mule. In comedy, Travina was a performer in the 2017 CBS Diversity Sketch Comedy Showcase, and her stand-up was featured on the reboot of BET’s Comic View.
More about Aden
Aden is a multi-disciplinary talent to watch who pursues art as a means not an end. A Writer, Showrunner and Producer, her first foray in film and television, in 2018 when she wrote and produced a concept trailer that followed four 20-something-year-old East African women in Toronto, awkwardly navigating adulthood as millennials and love & relationships as virgins. Appropriately titled, virgins!, in 2019, she went on to secure a development deal with CBC for the series, filmed it in 2021 and is now set to release this Fall (2022) on CBCGem.
More about Dr. Faiza
Dr. Faiza Hirji is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies and Media Arts at McMaster University. Her research interests include media representation of race, religion, ethnicity and gender, use of media in the construction of identity, and the importance of media within diasporic/transnational communities. Her book, Dreaming in Canadian: South Asian Youth, Bollywood and Belonging, was published in 2010 by UBC Press. Along with Sikata Banerjee and Rina Verma Williams, Faiza recently co-edited a special issue of Global Media Journal – Canadian Edition on Bollywood, Power and Politics. She is currently working on a project about media representation of Muslim women.
More about Zarqa
Zarqa Nawaz is a Canadian producer for film and television, a published author, public speaker, journalist, and former broadcaster. She created, wrote, directed, and produced episodes for the international CBC comedy series Little Mosque on the Prairie, which won a Gemini Award as well as Best International Television Series and Best Screenplay at the 2007 RomaFictionFest.
In addition, Nawaz has sold four pilots to ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox Studios, has written a bestselling comedic memoir, Laughing All the Way to the Mosque (published by HarperCollins), was an advice columnist for The Globe & Mail, a broadcast personality for CBC Radio, the host of CBC Saskatchewan’s “The Morning Edition,” and anchored CBC Saskatchewan News at 6.
In addition to launching her new self-titled CBC Gem series in 2022, in which she stars, writes, and produces, Nawaz has also written a new novel, Jameela Green Ruins Everything, about a disillusioned American Muslim woman who becomes embroiled in a plot to infiltrate an international terrorist organization.
A frequent public speaker on Islam and comedy, Nawaz received a Doctor of Divinity from the University of Saskatchewan for her interfaith work in the community. In recognition of her contribution to the world of arts, she received The Brampton Walk of Fame in 2019. Nawaz lives in Regina with her loving but long suffering family and is the proud mother of four children.
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