Nessa Aref
Writer | Director | Producer
Nessa is a Canadian-Iranian writer, director and producer based in the unceeded Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, (Vancouver, Canada). She is a graduate of University of British Columbia with a major in Anthropology and a minor in Political Science. She grew up in a loud, multi-lingual family.
After showrunning two origional webseries boasting 3million + views and 15k+ subscribers, Nessa co-produced her first feature film, Freaks (2018), which premiered at TIFF and can now be found streaming on Netflix. She later directed and co-wrote The Mirror (2019) as
part of Crazy8s 2019 festival, which is now streaming free on Alter. Her second short film Decomposing (2021) is currently touring the festival circuit. She has served as associate producer, writer and sometimes even director for the Al-Jazeera podcast series, Hindsight (2020 - 2021), narrated by Charles Dance.
More recently, she has developed Story Therapy, a new one-on-one program at Dunya Media, that reimagines the script development process for BIPOC writers, taking a holistic approach to story and script editing that also takes development of the human writer into account, aiming to fix a lot of gaps in the professional development pipeline.
Her work focuses on identity, loneliness and found families. She is currently developing Bad Persians, a very personal comedy series about the Iranian diaspora, as well as adapting her Crazy8s horror short The Mirror, into a feature film. Most recently, she co-directed her first music video, Servant of the Outer Dark for Thirteen Goats, which will premiere in July 2022.
Hindsight Podcast (Season 1 & 2)
- Dalida: Darkness in the Spotlight
- Huda Shaarawi: Groundbreaking Egyptian Feminist
- Forough Farrokhzad: The Rebel Poet
Nessa is also a story editor. Her approach is to focus on helping her clients find their voice, tackle their needs and get to the finish line. You can learn more by visiting her site for details
