Arshad Khan is an award-winning Pakistani-Canadian filmmaker and the co-founder and Festival Director of MISAFF. For more than a decade, he has helped build the festival into a destination for independent South Asian, West Asian and North African cinema in the Greater Toronto Area, cultivating an annual audience of more than 5,000 filmgoers and creating opportunities for filmmakers to connect directly with Canadian audiences and industry professionals.

As Festival Director, Khan oversees MISAFF’s programming and industry development, securing Canadian premieres of major international films and building partnerships with organizations including Telefilm Canada, the Canadian Media Fund and the Living Arts Centre. His programming has consistently emphasized ambitious, socially engaged cinema and work that expands how South Asian stories and communities are represented on screen. MISAFF is now a Canadian Screen Award-qualifying festival and has expanded its industry programming through its annual Symposium.

Khan is also an accomplished filmmaker. A graduate of Concordia University’s Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, he is best known for his feature documentary Abu, which screened internationally at festivals including the BFI London Film Festival and Los Angeles Film Festival and received two jury prizes. His experience on both sides of the festival ecosystem — as a filmmaker bringing work to audiences and as a programmer creating space for other filmmakers — continues to shape his approach to MISAFF.