In 2006, the then-aspiring filmmaker Fawzia Mirza was traveling the country doing educational performance work when she won an unrestricted artist grant for $25,000 dollars from an organization in Chicago. The grant, she says, gave her the freedom to devote herself full time to being an artist.
The Canadian-born Mirza co-wrote and starred in the film “Signature Move,” which premiered at the South by Southwest festival and was listed in “25 of the Best Lesbian Films of All Time.” She wrote an episode on the CBS series “The Red Line” which, according to her website, marked the first queer, Muslim romance on network TV. In 2023, she won “Best Director Feature” by the Director’s Guild of Canada for her film “The Queen of My Dreams.”
“It did change my life,” she recalls now about that initial grant she won, talking to ACoM from Toronto on the set of the show “Late Bloomers,” which she’s directing half a season for. “I was able to really find my way and work with my agent, take work in LA, even though I was living in Chicago, and take meetings. It was really a big shift for me, so I personally know the impact that an unrestricted grant can have on your career and it matters. It really, really matters.”
That experience contributed to her getting involved with the Pillars Artist Fellowship as an advisor-mentor for young Muslim filmmakers.
The fellowship is an initiative from the grant-making organization and Muslim community foundation Pillars Fund, in partnership with Left Handed Films (the production company of lauded actor/rapper Riz Ahmed) USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, the Ford Foundation, and sponsored by Netflix.
The project came out of a study by USC Annenberg on Muslim representation in media, which found that Muslims make up 25% of the world’s population, but only 1.1% of characters in popular TV series. Less than 10% of top grossing films from 2017-2019 had a Muslim character on screen, with less than 2% of those characters having speaking roles. The most depicted occupation for Muslim characters was criminals (37%), followed by law enforcement (15.7%.)
Now in its third year, the fellowship supports emerging Muslim screenwriters and directors in the U.S. and U.K. with a $40,000 unrestricted award, one-on-one mentorship, and access to industry connections and resources. The 20 Pillars Artist Fellows supported by the Fellowship have won major awards at Sundance and Tribeca, and landed deals with A24, Amazon, and Netflix.
Successful projects by alumni include the Nadra Widatalla-written “Paradise,” that premiered on Hulu in January and stars Sterling K. Brown and James Marsden; Imran J. Khan won a $50,000 grant to direct Ali Imran Zaidi’s short film, “The Boy with the Dinosaur Head,” and Karim Khan’s award-winning stage play “Brown Boys Swim” is now being adapted into a series at A24 after a competitive bidding war.
Along with Mirza, advisors to the program include a who’s-who of Muslim actors and filmmakers, like Riz Ahmed, Ramy Youssef, Mahershala Ali, May Calamawy, Nida Manzoor, and Saagar Shaikh.
“When you are a filmmaker looking to break into the industry, find work in the industry and learn, it’s always essential to find people who are willing to be on that journey with you and be a community that you can turn to to help you in the process of learning and expanding and growing and networking and building that community,” says Mirza. “And Pillars is definitely doing the work for Muslim artists.”
Mirza sees cooperation as crucial for Muslim artists right now. With Islamophobic incidents at the highest number ever recorded, including through employment discrimination and law enforcement encounters, she and the Pillars Fellowship aim to combat the negative stereotype of Muslims in Western media by emphasizing universality within differences.
“I think when people hear the word Muslim, there’s a certain stereotype that’s been perpetuated by Western media, TV shows, and movies. Not only am I a Muslim filmmaker, I’m a queer Muslim filmmaker. And so I have been fighting to get outside of many boxes the entire time I’ve been creating…”
“I think oftentimes people think, oh, well, this is a Muslim story, that means it’s only for this community, or this is a South Asian story or an African story or a British Muslim story, you know what I mean? And really these are deeply, deeply emotional and universal truths that we’re out here making and trying to get on screen.”
On the Pilars Foundation website, they note this program is not about creating “positive” Muslim stories, but rather “it’s about authentic storytelling.” Mirza says that non-Muslims telling stories about Muslims results in a fixation on tropes from the past, whereas stories told by the community are an opportunity for fresh, forward looking ideas.
“I love a rom-com. And that to me is as essential to show how hard and beautiful and powerful our love is, how sexy we are, how beautiful it is when we show emotion and are thriving,” said Mirza.
Asked her if the modern “diaspora story,” centered on themes of identity, belonging, immigration to the West, and generational divides, is a genre in itself, Mirza says it’s a natural result of more diverse voices telling more stories true to their own experiences.
“The diaspora story is obvious. They’re your experiences and they’re your truth,” she said. “I believe everyone has a story to tell and they should tell it. And if that becomes a genre, great. Is there an appetite for it? Of course there is. The universality of these stories is completely essential. And it’s beautiful and brings us together.”
She continued, “And the most universal truth to me is love. I find it essential to tell stories that center our joy, our power, our potential, and our possibilities that are both authentic and real… but also, I find at this moment more than ever, revolutionary, and essential to us thriving in the future as people.”
Mirza emphasized that the need for these stories has heightened significance amid rising anti-immigrant sentiment across the U.S. and much of the West and as Israel’s war in Gaza continues to inflame tensions directed toward Muslim communities. People feel a sense of resignation, even helplessness in the face of such hostility, noted Mirza. When there’s nothing you can do, but you can’t simply do nothing, Mirza says artists should do what they can, authentically.
“I don’t think you can be a compassionate person without recognizing and seeing the genocide,” said Mirza, in reference to the war in Gaza, which has claimed more than 70,000 lives, many of them women and children. Negotiations are ongoing, though much of Gaza lays in waste.
“As a filmmaker, when you make a project, when you make a movie and it’s your movie, no one cares as much about your work as you do… I say that to reflect upon the fact that we, as a community, we have to come together and care about our people now more than ever, because clearly no one else will if we don’t.”
Mirza acknowledged she has paid a price for her stance, a price other celebrities have paid for voicing support for Palestinians. “Many people I know have lost work over it. Many people have lost agents, many people have suffered, but no one is suffering as much as the people in Gaza. And so it’s literally the least we can do is speak our truth.”
“But the people of Gaza need our love. And our love means our voice, our work, our energy, our bodies, whatever form that takes… it takes many of us making art.”
Chris Alam is a California Local News Fellow with the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.
