Our Crew
FARAH JABIR, Director/WriTER
Farah Jabir (she/her) is a Southeast Asian, South Asian, and Arab filmmaker with an affinity for humanistic and impact storytelling. She is a graduate of NYU Tisch, where she was selected by the King Family Foundation as the recipient of the 2020 George A. Heinemann Award. She recently created INGRAINED NY, a video portraiture series on New York’s Asian diaspora with Welcome to Chinatown, and produced the documentary Sandcastles (IF/THEN Tribeca Film and Docs by the Sea). Her latest feature pitch, Tigers Don’t Sleep, was selected as a finalist at Impact X Netflix, and she was chosen as a fellow for Mentorship Matters (Amazon/AMC/Sony) and The Thousand Miles Project’s (Universal Content Productions) inaugural screenwriting classes. She was also selected by PBS and A-Docs for the Asian-American Stories of Resilience programme. She is currently a staff writer on a TV show in development at NETFLIX MENA. In her spare time, she often produces and works on commercials/music videos for clients like A24, Atlantic and Geffen Records, and learns the tricks of the trade on films like Paramount’s Imaginary Friends and DC Studios’ Joker: Folie á Deux.
Amelia Lim (she, her) is a Chinese-Malaysian-Australian filmmaker committed to telling stories that center the underrepresented and overlooked. With a strong background in documentary film, she directed Ingrained NY, a series of docu-portraits shedding light on the Asian experience in NYC, one of which was selected for an A-DOC short film grant in association with PBS. Most recently, she directed a documentary short film on an anti-fascist punk community in Malaysia, which is currently in post-production, with three other films in development. She works as a Development Junior Executive at the documentary division of Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Emmy award-winning production company/studio Imagine Entertainment. Previous production credits include Amend: The Fight for America (Netflix), Gone Missing (Discovery+), and Nightgowns with Sasha Velour (Quibi), though despite her experience in documentaries, has also worked on a series of narrative shorts. Based between three major cities across the world, which has only impacted her globalized view on storytelling and film, she is proud to call London, New York City, and Kuala Lumpur her home.
aMELIA lim, producer
arielle friedman,
Producer
Arielle Friemdan (she/her) is a first generation Colombian-American filmmaker based in NYC. Before attending Columbia University to pursue a degree in Film and Media Studies, Arielle was a dancer at the world-renowned ballet company BalletMet in Columbus, Ohio. It was through her experience in the ballet world, a predominately white and male-dominated industry, that she fiercely honed her love for inclusive storytelling, a sentiment that has continued through her work in film. Her directorial debut Countdown, premiered at the Portland Film Festival in 2021. Her most recent short film Immutable Uncertainties, won the Film Fund’s Narrative Shorts grant in 2021. The film premiered at NFFTY in 2022, where it won the Audience Choice Award and earned a Programmer’s Pick. Immutable Uncertainties has gone on to be featured on Directors Notes and Beyond the Short, and most recently it is an official selection of the 2023 Lower East Side Film Festival. In 2020, Arielle co-founded Fazed Films, a female lead production company committed to working with underrepresented artists and storytellers. Under the banner of Fazed Films, Arielle has produced four narrative short films, is in development for three feature films and has worked on music videos for clients such as Atlantic Records and Interscope Records.
zIBIA bARDIN, pRODUCER
Zibia Bardin is a writer, producer, and filmmaker based in New York City. Her favorite movie is Paris, Texas. She hopes to make one like it one day.
CHADWICK ARMSTRONG,
PRODUCER
Chadwick Armstrong is an actor/producer looking to tell stories from the queer perspective that aren’t often seen. Why tell the same stories? He’s looking forward to working with such incredible talent.
LEWAA NASSERDEEN,
producer
Lewaa Nasserdeen has a passion for exploring human stories across a wide breadth of genres. A prolific multi-hyphenate, Lewaa's original series Homemade, an autobiographical dramedy, was recently in development at Showtime with Lewaa set to star. The series was the first project sold under an exclusive overall deal at SKYDANCE Television. Since exiting his overall, Lewaa was a writer and Co-Executive Producer on HBO's 'Parasite' -- a TV adaptation created by Adam McKay based on the Oscar Winning film and later joined the mini-room of the Hulu Limited Series, 'Swipe’, Executive Produced by Danny Strong. In addition to staffing and development, Lewaa was an alum of the WGA’s 2021 Showrunner Training Program. Deftly pivoting between comedy and drama, Lewaa started his career in America writing on the hit ABC comedies The Goldbergs and The Real O’Neals before co-producing the critically acclaimed third season of Marvel’s Daredevil for Netflix. Lewaa wrote/supervised the much-lauded fourth episode ('Blindsided') featuring a showstopping 11-minute prison fight sequence. On the acting side, Lewaa wrote, starred in, and executive produced Berlin, a half-hour dramedy produced by Jax Media starring Dani Pudi and Amy Landecker. He also guest-starred on an NCIS: New Orleans episode opposite Scott Bakula (Conspiracy Theories).
Luc ung,
cinematographer
Luc Ung is a Franco-Chinese cinematographer based between New York City and Paris, France. His love for cinema finds its roots in the streets of La Rochelle, France, when a fortunate encounter led him to the La Rochelle International Film Festival (Fema). Luc has been working as a freelance cinematographer for the past five years. As a Zen Buddhist practitioner and a Kriya Yogi, he’s often been told by actors and directors that he’s able to create a set environment that is nurturing and safe for them to express themselves fully. He believes that his cooking influences his cinematography. His creative influences include cinematographers Sven Nykvist, Darius Khondji, Mark Lee Ping-Bing; directors Ingmar Bergman, Céline Sciamma, Xavier Dolan, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Lynne Ramsay; architect Frank Lloyd Wright and his parents’s cooking. Some of his notable work includes "Chicken" which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2022 and won Best Student Narrative at NFFTY in 2023, “New Shoes” which premiered at the American Pavilion Emerging Filmmaker Showcase at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, “The Martyr of Hudson Yards” which premiered on NOWNESS ASIA and "Talk to me in Silence" which won Best Short Film at Los Angeles Short Film Festival and was nominated for Best Short Film and Best Director at Nice International Film Festival.
Our CAST
mARYAM
Anna Khaja is an Indian and Pakistani (Punjabi) American actress perhaps best known for her roles as 'Indira' on AMC's The Walking Dead World Beyond, as 'Manisha' on The Good Place, and as 'Rachel' on Silicon Valley. In 2022, she starred as 'Jaya' in the Netflix feature 'Definition Please,' produced by Ava DuVernay. Anna is also an award-winning playwright and solo performer. Her play 'Shaheed: The Dream and Death of Benazir Bhutto' about the Pakistani prime minister enjoyed an extended Off-Broadway run in NYC. Time Out called her performance "a wonder", the NY Times praised her as a "gifted actress" and Backstage said the play was "heart-stopping, engrossing, funny, and profound theatre." Edge Magazine said Shaheed was "a one-woman triumph, and a testament to Khaja's talent, capacity and gifts, of which Hollywood must take full notice." In 2015, she booked the role of Sita Parrish on Quantico. She recurs on The Good Place, For the People, Madam Secretary & Lethal Weapon. She is the recipient of the Google x Black List Storytelling Fellowship, a Sundance Lab alum, and was selected for the Mentorship Matters TV Writers program. She also starred in the John Legend music video "Surefire," which won an MTV Music Award for 'Best Music Video with a Message.'
Aisha
Zina (which means "beauty" in Arabic) is a Moroccan-Italian actress born and raised in New York City. She began her career acting at the age of twelve performing in school plays and taking classes at the renowned HB Studio. She is a rising junior drama major at New York University studying at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting and is a recent graduate of LaGuardia Arts High School’s drama program. Zina is signed with Stewart Talent for film, television, theatre, voice-overs, and commercials. When she is not working, she designs and sews clothing items for her fashion label, Louhaichy.