Directors' Lab
TIFF Directors’ Lab is a five-day competitive talent development programme that takes place during the Toronto International Film Festival in September.
Formerly TIFF Filmmaker Lab, TIFF Directors’ Lab returns with a greater focus on directorial debuts. The Lab selects 16 Canadian and international directors from hundreds of applications to receive an impactful career-launching mentorship from renowned directors, producers, agents, distributors, and top industry experts from around the world. TIFF Directors’ Lab is designed to be a catalyst for emerging directors to refine their creative projects and prepare their projects for the marketplace. Select participants of the Lab will be eligible for fellowships generously supported by our donors.
This year, select participants will be awarded the Micki Moore Fellowship, the Share Her Journey Giving Circle Fellowship, the Share Her Journey Directors’ Lab Fellowship in honour of Viola Desmond, and the Jennifer A. Tory Legacy Fellowship.
Select Lab participants will receive financial support to be in Toronto for the duration of the programme, with specifics in their official invitation.
2025 TIFF Directors’ Lab Participants
Alexandre Lefebvre is a filmmaker from Quebec. He started his career in documentaries, drawn by the rawness of real life. After a short film that won awards at RIDM and FNC, and a mid-length television documentary for Radio-Canada, he felt a growing urge to move toward fiction. He wanted to stage emotion with actors and dig into the mess of human contradiction. Since then, he’s directed four short fiction films that screened internationally (FIFF Namur, Regard, TIFF Canada’s Top Ten, PÖFF) and is now writing his first feature with the support of Metafilms production company.
Fresh out of rehab, Mario, a recovering gambling addict, sees a reward on a runaway bull he once trained as his only shot at paying back Louise, the wife he betrayed and stole from. But as the chase reawakens old instincts, he’ll discover that forgiveness, especially to oneself, may never come.
Alicia K. Harris is a filmmaker from Scarborough, Canada, known for her poetic visual style and dedication to celebrating Black girlhood. Her latest film, On a Sunday at Eleven, premiered at TIFF 2024 and the 2025 Berlinale, with selections at Palm Springs ShortFest, Aspen ShortFest, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, and more. It was named to TIFF’s Canada’s Top Ten and won Best Live Action Short at the Canadian Screen Awards — an honour she also received for her 2020 short, PICK. In 2024, Regent Park Film Festival hosted a retrospective of her work. She is currently developing her debut feature, Camp Oshun.
At Camp Oshun, an all–Black girls’ summer arts camp housed on the grounds of a former plantation, a shy 10-year-old camper and a naïve young counsellor form an unexpected bond. As supernatural forces begin to stir, they must navigate forbidden queer feelings, complicated relationships, buried grief, and the thin boundary between the living and the dead.
Balder is a writer and director from Stockholm, Sweden. He graduated with a BFA in film from HDK-Valand in 2024 and was selected for Nordic Talents by Nordisk Film & TV Fond to pitch his feature-length debut, Worldbuilding. He also won The Swedish Film Institute’s 2024 Wild Card prize for an up-and-coming director. His first short film, Vrå, was in competition for Best Swedish Short at the 2024 Gothenburg Film Festival. He’s also one of the founders of the production company BANK.
Maria tries navigating her new life when a series of mysterious events has her climbing down a sewer, into another world, in order to rescue her son.
Che Tagyamon is an independent filmmaker and media artist with a bachelor’s degree in film from the University of the Philippines. Her work moves across film, animation, and photography, centring on themes of class inequality, diaspora, and memory as they relate to the experiences of Filipino women and children. Her films have screened internationally in Winterthur, Singapore, Los Angeles, Fajr, and Kaohsiung, among other festivals. She has participated in workshops for emerging filmmakers, such as Berlinale Talents, Busan Asian Film Academy, and the Latin American Training Center Motion Pictures Association Workshop. She is currently developing her debut feature film, Love-Letter-For-You.txt.vbs, which was selected for the 2025 Produire au Sud Film Lab.
In 2000s Manila, as the garment industry collapses and the internet rises, textile worker Lana falls for Caloy, a programmer who unknowingly unleashes the ILOVEYOU virus. If a line of code can shake the world, can the hands of women who have built so much do the same?
Evangeline Kabuya’s first web series, Dog Days, gained her recognition both locally and internationally at CANNESERIES, the 2020 Prix Gémeaux, and the NYC WebFest Best Foreign Language Series Awards. She completed her bachelor’s degree in communications and film at Concordia University and is now studying for her master’s degree in film at New York University. She’s currently working on her first feature, La Professeure (The Professor), which has received public funding from Telefilm Canada’s Production Program for a feature film, as well as on the short film La Neuvième, produced by Némesis Films with the support of SODEC and CALQ.
When an ambitious young academic becomes an assistant to a distinguished professor, he finds himself sucked into an unhealthy relationship. His convictions take a hit when he discovers the deception on which the professor has built her career.
India Opzoomer is a Canadian-British artist and filmmaker based in Austin, Texas. She tells coming-of-age stories about the dissociation and disconnection young people feel in an increasingly digital world. Her past work as a director and cinematographer has screened at BAFTA- and Oscar-qualifying festivals worldwide, including Austin Film Festival, NFMLA, Palm Springs, and Raindance. Her latest short film, Poster Boy, was the recipient of the Austin Film Society Grant for short films and a semi-finalist for the Screen Craft Film Fund. Opzoomer holds an MFA in film production from the University of Texas at Austin and a BA in history from the University of Oxford.
In 1930s rural Texas, an aging farm couple receives their first electric lightbulb, setting off a quiet revolution in their marriage and community, until the promise of progress threatens to burn everything they love to the ground.
Kaelo Iyizoba is a Nigerian-American filmmaker. He holds an MFA in film from Columbia University, where he was the first filmmaker to win top honours for producing and screenwriting. In 2025, he joined the inaugural cohort of Sundance’s Cultural Impact Fellowship. Iyizoba is a recipient of the Gates Foundation Media grant and a winner of the Facebook Future Filmmaker grant. He is a Berlinale Talent, a Rideback Rise’s circle member, a Blackhouse fellow, and a finalist for the Tyler Perry Studios Dream Collective. Iyizoba’s films have screened at festivals around the world, and his thesis film, Mr. Bold, was shortlisted for a BAFTA student award.
A grieving young woman gets sucked into the world of an old Nollywood movie, where she must become the hero of the story to save her mother and return to her own reality.
Born into an Armenian family displaced from the Southwest Asia and North Africa region and raised in an immigrant suburb of Toronto, Kamee Abrahamian is an interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, educator, community organizer, caregiver, and witch whose creative practice summons ancestral reclamation, diasporic futurism, and visionary worldbuilding. Abrahamian is a Pushcart-nominated writer, Lambda-awarded playwright, recipient of the 2025 Creative Capital Award, and alum at VONA, Banff Centre for Arts, and DocX (Duke University). Their fiction short Transmission (2019) — the first known Armenian sci-fi film — premiered at BFI Flare. The films they’ve worked on have received support from Sundance, HotDocs, and Catapult. They are currently developing their first feature (We Are Our Mountains) and a limited series (Ensouled).
Shahan, a jaded activist-turned-assassin, leaves her child behind to join a women’s militia in the mountains of West Asia. Reluctant at first, she bonds with an idealistic revolutionary to mount a final defence against the empirical forces hell-bent on destroying their homelands.
Kunjila Mascillamani is a writer-director from Keralam, India, and a postgraduate in Direction and Screenplay Writing from the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute. Her debut feature project, Guptam, was produced by Payal Kapadia, Jeo Baby, and Kani Kusruti. The project has been selected for the NFDC Co-Production Market, Keralam Film Market, Bangalore Literature Festival, and CinéV-CHD Projects Market. Mascillamani’s short film Asanghadithar (The Unorganised), part of the anthology Freedom Fight, received a Special Jury Mention at the 2023 Keralam State Film Awards and was added to the Bachelor of Arts curriculum at the University of Calicut. Her accolades include the Laadli Media Award and Toto Funds the Arts Award.
When her younger daughter disappears in a graveyard, a single mother is forced to move to a conservative, religious, rural area in Keralam, India, after which a series of mysterious and disastrous incidents begin to plague the region. Now, she must prove to the townsfolk that she is not the one bringing God's wrath upon them.
Lin Htet Aung is a self-taught filmmaker from Myanmar. His short films have been selected at international film festivals, including the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and International Film Festival Rotterdam, where he won the Tiger Short Award in 2025. Other awards received include the Best Director Award (2020) and Best Screenplay Award (2023) at the Singapore International Film Festival. An alumnus of Berlinale Talents, Locarno Filmmakers Academy, and the Asian Film Academy, and a Prince Claus Seed Awardee, he is currently developing his debut feature, Making a Sea, which has received support from the Asian Cinema Fund and the Red Sea Award at the Asian Project Market.
A mayor from a small arid town in Myanmar is due to welcome three engineers tasked with building an artificial sea, and becomes entangled in a web of mystery and suspicion upon discovering that they bear striking resemblances to three wanted murderers, leading him to question the truth and identity of those around him.
Mai Nakanishi is a Japanese director who has been crafting female-driven, genre-defying narratives spanning Asia that push storytelling boundaries. Her shorts include HANA (2018), a supernatural horror shot in Korea; Swallow (2021), a body horror filmed in Taiwan; and Border (2023), a surrealistic home invasion thriller shot in Korea. In her latest short, Confession (2025), she collaborated with pioneering female cinematographer Akiko Ashizawa, known for her work with Kiyoshi Kurosawa. An alumna of BIFF Asian Film Academy, Talents Tokyo, and Sundance/NHK Script Lab, her short film collection is set for a theatrical release in Japan this fall.
When an expectant mother opens her door to a hungry, latchkey child, buried childhood traumas resurface, threatening her fragile sense of motherhood and forcing a harrowing moral choice.
Maya Bastian is an award-winning Tamil-Canadian filmmaker with roots in conflict journalism. Her film Tigress, produced by India’s JAR Pictures, participated at Cannes Court Metrage 2021. She is in development on her art-house horror feature The Devil’s Tears with Fae Pictures, and has just released a paranormal mystery series set in 1970s Southeast Asia for Bandai Namco. Her comedy series How to Be Brown is being executive produced by Marvel star Iman Vellani. She is an alumna of TIFF Series Accelerator, 1497 Features Lab, FNC New Market Pitch, Breaking Through the Lens, and JETS Initiative Berlinale. Her work frequently explores the trauma related to displacement and migration.
When a parasitic infection threatens a remote jungle village recovering from war, the fractured community must come together to defend themselves despite the long-held tensions threatening to tear them apart.
Muhannad Lamin is a Libyan director, writer, and producer. He graduated with a degree in directing and screenwriting from Tripoli’s Art Institute. His short films have been screened at film festivals including the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, Locarno Film Festival, and Rhode Island International Film Festival. He has experience as a production manager and coordinator for documentaries such as Freedom Fields and After a Revolution. In 2023, Lamin premiered his debut feature documentary, Donga, at the IDFA International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam and the Red Sea International Film Festival.
In the timeless Libyan desert, an elderly Bedouin herdsman resists aiding two hunters seeking the sacred Waddan, unaware that Qabeel, one of the hunters, is possessed after consuming the Waddan’s flesh without the necessary rituals, putting them all in grave danger.
Nick Thorburn is a writer, filmmaker, musician, and artist. He wrote and directed
An uncompromising artist attempts a comeback in a scene that’s moved on without her, only to find her greatest challenge isn’t the music — it’s herself. Underground Woman is a story about aging, relevance, and the possibility of starting over.
Rita Ferrando is a Canadian-Argentinian writer and filmmaker whose work places focus on the lives of women and children, exploring impermanence and desire. She is developing her debut feature film, Blue Sky Yellow Sunflower, with the support of Telefilm Canada. Her recent films Pleasure Garden (2022) and Ikebana (2021) have been presented internationally at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Toronto International Film Festival, Beijing International Film Festival, and Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, among others. Ferrando holds a BFA in film studies from Toronto Metropolitan University and is a Master of Visual Studies candidate at the University of Toronto (2026). She is also a 2025 cohort member of the Women in the Director’s Chair Career Advancement Module.
In the summer of 2001, 17-year-old Alba moves with her Argentinian family to a rural town in Southern Ontario, where she soon meets Sofia, an enigmatic local girl. Together, they experience the heady intensity of first love until a sudden loss pulls them apart. More than a decade later, a chance encounter in Italy offers them the possibility to rediscover each other anew.
Salvador Miranda is a Mexican-Canadian director and producer. His debut short film, This is my land... (2019), premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. His film installation, Life Eternal (2022), premiered at Kasseler Dokfest, received a nomination for the 2022 Golden Cube Prize, and won the 2024 Hertzog da Silva Award. His documentary short, Promised Land (2023), premiered at IFFR. He is the co-director of Rod & Cone Film and the co-founder of Rotterdam’s FilmDak platform. Miranda is an alumnus of the Kunstinstituut Parallel Curriculum and holds an MFA in lens-based media from the Piet Zwart Institute.
Two vampire lovers with a suicide pact take one last road trip south through a long-dead Wild West. But when they pick up a hitchhiker fleeing her own demons, their fatal plan starts to unravel.
Sam Manacsa is a Filipino filmmaker and production designer. After graduating with a degree in film from the University of the Philippines, she has worked as an art director on films such as Carlo Francisco Manatad’s Whether the Weather Is Fine, among others. Her film If People Such as We Cease to Exist was selected for the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival 2017. Manacsa was selected as one of the fellows for the Asian Film Academy 2019 and is an alumna of the SEAFIC Seed Lab in 2022. Her sophomore short, Cross My Heart and Hope to Die, had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival and won awards including the grand prize at PÖFF Shorts and Regard-Saguenay International Short Film Festival.
When Rosemary becomes the only witness to the disappearance of a boy, she is drawn into the search by the child’s mother, Agnes. Together they confront their tragic truths and forgotten dreams.
Stephanie Ricci is a Brazilian filmmaker. She holds a BFA in film from FAAP, studied cinema at EICAR (France), and earned a master’s degree in writing arts from Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Her training also includes a specialization in screenwriting from Roteiraria (2022), hybrid and performative dramaturgies at Teatro Cemitério de Automóveis (2019), and documentary studies at the Academia Internacional de Cinema (2014). In 2024, she was awarded a scholarship to study at Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola (Spain), where she is currently developing her first feature film, Night's Mouth, selected for the IndieLisboa Lab and awarded the Hubert Bals Development Support 2025. Her latest short, Those Who Move, premiered at the 2025 International Film Festival Rotterdam and won Best Fiction at Go Short.
Areta is 70 years old and has only one fear greater than death: being forgotten. On a strange night after losing her house keys, she sets out to find a 24-hour locksmith in São Paulo’s obscure downtown, but ends up in a maze of surreal encounters with characters who force her to confront the fading traces of her own existence.
Tanaseth Tulyathan is a Thai filmmaker. His upcoming debut feature film in development, The Chameleon Woman, was selected for the Asian Project Market (2024) and Produire au Sud (2025). His short film Morlam (2024) has screened at numerous festivals, including the Newport Beach Film Festival, Shanghai International Film Festival, and Vancouver Asian Film Festival. Tulyathan has gained recognition for his commercials and music videos and has been acknowledged by the Atlanta Film Festival, SCAD Savannah Film Festival, the Emmys, the Telly Awards, and the UKMVA. He is an alumnus of the Ross School in East Hampton, New York (2018), and holds a BFA in film and elevision from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia (2022).
An undocumented young Hmong woman embarks on a perilous journey to find belonging in 1980s Thailand by assuming the identity of another.
Born and raised in Montreal, Canada, Xu-Ming Lor studied fine arts at Central Saint-Martins University of the Arts London. Shortly after he graduated, his short film Aniccam was selected in a number of festivals and had its online premiere on the global video channel NOWNESS ASIA. His latest short film, A Night of Cambodian Opera, had its Canadian premiere at the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma. His first feature film, De renaître du sang et des cendres (To Be Reborn from Blood and Ashes), is currently in development after receiving grants from SODEC and CALQ.
In Montreal, a father’s traditional ways clash with his son’s contemporary aspirations. In Paris, a mother and her daughters are stuck in the French social elevator. In Phnom Penh, a working-class family faces the country’s accelerated industrialization. By linking the fate of these three Cambodian families to Asia’s current economic boom, To Be Reborn from Blood and Ashes depicts an intimate and post-colonial portrait of the Western dream of Asian immigration.
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