Bio

Yazmeen Kanji is a Muslim South Asian film director and the founder of a filmmaking organization called Films With A Cause. Through the organization she speaks at young people’s conferences about the importance of POC representation in film. Yazmeen began directing award-winning narrative short films at the age of 15 and has since expanded into documentary filmmaking. She was awarded for two short films on youth gang violence by a local film festival in York Region, having the opportunity to visit the set of Saving Hope for a day and shadow the episode’s director. While beginning the early stages of her filmmaking career during undergrad, Yazmeen was featured in RBC’s Future Launch commercial. Her first documentary, From Syria To Hope (2019) was awarded Best Short Doc at the Toronto Short Film Festival. Yazmeen independently produced, filmed, directed, edited and distributed From Syria To Hope, highlighting the experiences of three Syrian families who arrived to Canada under refugee status. During her undergrad Yazmeen directed a docu-series called Beyond The Blue Line about the men’s hockey team at the University of Toronto and she is currently directing a docu-series about refugee cooks called World Table for Matthew House Toronto in collaboration with Deloitte Canada. Yazmeen recently directed a short documentary, With Love From Munera (2020), which is set to premiere at Inside Out. She is also the Administrative Assistant for Canesugar Filmworks and acted as the on-set assistant and the Behind The Scenes videographer for Charles Officer’s feature film, Akilla’s Escape, where she independently filmed and conducted interviews with cast members. Before her final undergraduate year, she took her interests international and worked as an Intern at a production company called Passionedia in Dubai that seeks to alter traditional norms. In her free time, Yazmeen is working towards her narrative filmmaking career. 

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