The MENA Film Festival returns to Vancouver January 15-23, 2026 to present something tender during turbulent times under its seventh edition’s theme: Love. The annual festival champions stories and voices from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), otherwise known as Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) community.
The films programmed in this year’s edition focus on love in its many forms: from romantic intimacy, with its longing, heartbreak, and humor, to platonic and familial bonds, whether inherited or forged over time. Love is explored not only through interpersonal experiences, but also in the layered and often complicated relationships individuals have with their homeland.
Comprised of eight feature films and 34 shorts organized into themed bundles, this year’s lineup reflects diverse lived experiences from 26 countries. Touching on belonging, political unrest, trauma, memory, romance, and hope, the programming celebrates the resilience and creativity of SWANA filmmakers, offering stories that remind us of love’s power to endure, transform, and connect across borders and generations. With a few exceptions, all in-person films will be streaming online until January 30. Check out the full programming online to learn more.
Here are a few events to look forward to as festival dates approach:
Opening Ceremony | January 15
Industry Rendezvous: Film Funding Workshop | January 19
If you’re a filmmaker, producer, or media creative looking to navigate Canada’s grant landscape (or just curious about how funding works) this workshop is a great opportunity to hear directly from the people behind organizations like Telefilm, Canada Media Fund, Canada Council for the Arts, and more. Spaces are limited in order to allow participants to meet reps one-on-one, offering creatives a chance both to hear about each funder’s programs, as well as to share their work and ask specific questions about available programs in an informal “pitch” session.
Editing in the Archive with Deena Charara and Chantal Partamian | January 21
This is a full-day program around archival, editing, and documentary practices for filmmakers and artists working with found footage and archival material and those who are interested in working with hybrid essayistic forms.
The two facilitators, Lebanese editor and video artist Deena Charara, and experimental filmmaker and archivist Chantal Partamian, will share conceptual frameworks and propose technical approaches to editing archival images in the context of film and video art. The session will further situate archival mediation, media excavation, and “digital sculpting” as decolonial practices. The program will include a lunch break and will end with an open discussion between the participants and both artists.
TOUCHSCAPE (Dir. Niloufar Samadi)
Catch three short films from B.C., online or in person:
REDACTED DREAMS | Dir. Fariba Farjam
An intimate portrait of Mohammad Mohammadali, the prominent Iranian author who became a target for censorship in his homeland. The film traces a writer’s journey of perseverance as he continues to write and publish despite the odds.
BURCU’S ANGELS | Dir. Özgün Gündüz
For over 30 years, Burcu’s Angels was more than a store, it was a radical space of care. This film honours a Turkish queer elder and the vanishing spaces that held queer lives.
TOUCHSCAPE | Dir. Niloufar Samadi
In the in-between spaces of memory, desire, and diaspora, the film unfolds through hand-processed Super 8 and digital layers, tracing Iranian queer identities in intimate, tactile landscapes of sensation and remembrance. TOUCHSCAPE will be screened as part of the Crush Bundle on opening night.
Closing event: THIS IS A LOVE LETTER — MENA Underground Sounds | January 23
Here, rave culture becomes a site of resistance, where sound and movement turn joy, care, and diasporic connection into a love letter written in basslines, bodies, and belonging, featuring four MENA/SWANA veterans and community leaders from the underground scenes of Vancouver and Calgary.
Learn more about the MENA Film Festival on their website and stay tuned for updated on their Instagram page. Tickets and passes are available for purchase online.
