On March 12th, 2019, the short documentary From Syria to Hope premiered at Innis Town Hall. The film, which was directed by third year Innis student Yazmeen Kanji looks inside the lives of three Syrian refugee families living in the Greater Toronto Area. The film intends to combat the xenophobia and Islamophobia that has been increasing in the media as more Syrian refugees move to Canada. From Syria to Hope is an official Films With a Cause documentary, and was made in collaboration with the non-profit organization York Region Muslims.

The night began with a brief introduction to both the film and the director from the night’s host, Lily Evans, who is currently doing production work on Film With a Cause’s upcoming docu-series. She then called Yazmeen up to talk about the documentary before the film began.

After the screening, there was a panel discussion moderated by Anisha Vohora, who works with Films With a Cause as a legal advisor. The panel featured Yazmeen Kanji, Gloria Nafziger and Bayan Khatib. Gloria Nafziger has been working with refugees in Toronto for over 30 years and, most recently, has been supporting refugee families through private sponsorship as well as though volunteer work at the refugee shelter, Romero House. Bayan Khatib is the co-founder and director of the Syrian Canadian Foundation as well as the co-founder of the Syria Film Festival in Toronto.

The panel discussion included many important topics, such as the use and abuse of social media in spreading information about the Syrian refugee crisis, the importance of family reunification, and the challenges that Syrian refugees face upon arriving in Canada. When asked how people could assist in settling refugees and fighting intolerance, every panelist agreed in the importance of volunteer work within local communities.

I had a chance to sit down with Yazmeen and discuss her documentary, as well as Films With a Cause.

Innis Herald: Tell me a bit about yourself.
Yazemeen Kanji: I’m in third year, and I’m doing a double major in Equity Studies and Peace, Conflict, and Justice, with a minor in Cinema Studies.

IH: Is From Syria to Hope your first big video project?
YK: Yes. I’ve done a lot of video projects, but this is the first documentary of this capacity. I’ve done some videography projects for campus work, as well as two or three short films in high school, but nothing this length—and nothing that took this amount of time.

IH: How did you pick this topic?
YK: I’ve wanted to do a documentary project for a while—all throughout high school, in fact. The Syrian refugee crisis began in 2015, when I was in grade 11, and at that point I started thinking about making a documentary more seriously. My family and I were hanging out with the first family shown in the film, and we were really close with them. We’d go to see them on weekends, they’d make us food, sometimes they would come over to our house, and we’d all hang out. I’d wanted to make a documentary for a long time and this sort of came at the right moment where I was trying to build my skills in video making. I also had such a close personal connection to the family that we were interacting with—that made me want others to understand that they’re just here because they have to be here, and they really wish that they were back home.

IH: How did you pick the other two families?
YK: I knew that I couldn’t have just one family in the film because there’s a lot of different experiences, and a lot of different families that were brought to Canada through different means, like through sponsorship programs and through government funding. I didn’t just want one family to be shown, because then their story would be all anyone would really know. I ended up finding the second family through some of my mom’s connections. They had reached out to this family because they had been interviewed while they were in Jordan, so they were a bit more comfortable doing media work. I found the third family through Facebook. There are a few Facebook groups for Syrian families, and I just posted an outline of what I was looking for for this documentary project I was doing, and asked anyone who was interested to contact me. The man in the family contacted me and we went forward from there.

IH: You mentioned that it was going to be shown in a film festival. Has that happened yet?
YK: Yes! That happened on March 21st. That was really fun and exciting, because that was the first major film festival that I had shown anything to, and the first festival for this film.

IH: And what festival was that?
YK: It was the Toronto Short Film Festival. I recently got the notification that From Syria to Hope was awarded best short documentary at the festival. I was really excited about that—that recognition for a first try is really inspiring and really motivating, because I can now see the potential for stories like these to succeed in mainstream media. Some people recommended that I should try getting it on CBC or something like that, so I’m trying to do that right now with the company that I work with. We’re going to see if that’s a possibility.

IH: Can you tell me a bit about Films With a Cause?
YK: I started putting together the idea two summers ago, around the time that I was searching for families and I was coming up with the idea for From Syria to Hope. I felt that bridge between filmmaking and social justice work didn’t really exist yet. I’ve always been involved in videomaking, filmmaking, and sort of an arts pathway, but I’ve also been really interested in social justice work as well. I always felt like I had to choose between them, and I wanted to find a way to create a platform where I didn’t have to. That’s why I created Films With a Cause.

IH: Tell me a bit about the docu-series that you’re doing.
YK: The premise is to show people’s daily lives, profiling individuals from different communities in five-minute episodes. Each episode is going to be a very short profile on an individual from a community who maybe isn’t heard from in mainstream media often enough, or who is only shown in mainstream media when their story can be exploited and sensationalized.

Interview was edited for length and clarity.

Photo caption: From Syria to Hope documents the lives of three Syrian refugee families living in the GTA. COURTESY of FILMS WITH A CAUSE