Kashif Pasta returns to the YVR Screen Scene Podcast to talk about his new short film, The Muslim Guide to Prayer in Space, which screens this weekend at the DGC BC’s Spotlight Directors Conference. The Muslim Guide to Prayer in Space stars friend of the pod Osric Chau as a Malaysian astronaut endeavouring to find a direction to pray in orbit, where there is no up or down. Kashif’s film is inspired in part by the experience of Dr. Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, a Muslim astronaut who made history as the first Malaysian in space and actually ascended during Ramadan, which presented all kinds of challenges that he and religious authorities worked to figure out. Kashif’s film was funded in part by the DGC BC, who awarded Kashif the DGC BC Established Greenlight Award at the 2024 Spotlight BC Directors Conference (full disclosure: our host – Sabrina – was on the jury that awarded Kashif this prize). In this wildly entertaining episode, Kashif reflects on the hows and whys of his thought-provoking, funny, visually stunning, and soul-stirring film. Episode sponsor: Fish Flight Entertainment

Filmmaker Zach Lipovsky visits the YVR Screen Scene Podcast to reflect on his past, present, and future. His past includes placing fifth out of 12,000 on Steven Spielberg's filmmaking competition show On the Lot; collaborating with Adam Stein on the 2018 genre hit Freaks, numerous episodes of genre television, and 2025’s Final Destination Bloodlines, the last of which was the first Final Destination movie to cross $100 million in domestic earnings and gross more than $315 million worldwide. As for his present and future, there’s Gremlins 3 – which Zach and Adam are currently co-writing with Chris Columbus (the iconic director of Home Alone and Mrs. Doubtfire who also wrote the original Gremlins) – and the sequel to Freaks. Beyond the writing, directing, and producing, Zach has and continues to mentor emerging and aspiring filmmakers through organisations like Crazy8s and the British Columbia District Council of the Directors Guild of Canada (AKA DGC BC).

This weekend, the DGC BC will recognise Zach’s many contributions to the film and television scene when it honours him with the Industry Builder Award at its annual Spotlight BC Directors Conference. On the eve of the conference, Zach sits down with Sabrina Rani Furminger to talk filmmaking, his love for Vancouver cast and crews, Final Destination Bloodlines, Mogwai, his longtime collaboration with Adam Stein, how he helped save Vancouver’s Park Theatre, and what it means to be an industry builder. Episode sponsor: Fish Flight Entertainment

Filmmaker Kate Green (NarcoLeap) returns to the YVR Screen Scene Podcast to discuss Menopause: Coming In Hot, her audacious documentary that was produced through Telus Originals and has its world premiere this week at the 2025 Whistler Film Festival. Inspired by Kate's own journey through menopause, Menopause: Coming in Hot features candid personal accounts and expert insight about perimenopause and menopause. Fascinating, relatable, and often hilarious – spoiler alert: there’s a vulva puppet – the film reframes menopause as an empowering stage of life, helping women feel seen, heard, and understood. Not only does the film break the stigma that exists around perimenopause and menopause, but it acknowledges the existence of both, which is groundbreaking in and of itself. As Kate’s own mom says in the documentary, “Women need to know.” Another line that sums up the experience of perimenopause and menopause AND Kate’s execution of this film? “Shit gets done when women get angry.” In this compelling conversation with Sabrina Rani Furminger, Kate Green talks vulva puppets, “the change,” breaking the stigma, and the kind of shit that gets done when women get angry.

Episode sponsor: Fish Flight Entertainment

Jay Brazeau is an icon of the Vancouver film and television scene, and he’s got the filmography to prove it. He’s appeared in iconic television series like The X-Files, Supernatural, Stargate SG-1, Da Vinci’s Inquest, and 21 Jump Street, Hollywood fare like Watchmen and Best In Show, and critically acclaimed indie fare like Eadweard, Down River, and Carl Bessai’s Fathers and Sons. He actually won a Leo Award for Fathers and Sons, which is a role that required him to get in a knife fight with Ben Immanuel, get drunk, and talk dirty over a coffin at a funeral. Jay is also an in-demand voice actor whose credits are many and include Sabrina: The Animated Series and the Academy Award nominated National Film Board of Canada short The Big Snit, the latter of which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. On stage, he’s starred in productions of Hairspray!, Fiddler on the Roof, The Cat Came Back, and The Battle of Georges Boivin.

There are plenty of reasons as to why Jay has been a go-to character actor for the Vancouver screen scene for decades (his versatility; his reliability; his intuition; his artistry), but if you ask Jay, it’s because he’s lucky and (his words) “every production needs a fat guy.”

In this compelling conversation with Sabrina Rani Furminger, Jay reflects on his journey from Winnipeg to screens and stages large and small, appearing in a whopping 10 productions of Fiddler on the Roof, and how he confirmed that his improvised knife fight in Fathers and Sons was true to life.

Episode sponsor: UBCP / ACTRA

Filmmaker and screenwriter Ken Kabatoff (Travelers) took home the big prize at the DGC BC’s Greenlight competition a couple of years ago, and the short film he created with that financial backing – The Doukhobor – is one of the most impactful horror films our host has ever seen. The Doukhobor draws its inspiration from the story of the Freedomite Doukhobors, and the abysmal treatment this group of pacifists, freethinkers, and anti-materialists (whose members included Ken’s own family) received at the hands of the Canadian government. Ken is also the filmmaker of two terrifying horror shorts – LUTO and LUTO 2 – as well as a recent video in which he attempted to remake his first LUTO film shot for shot using AI (a video that is horrifying for reasons not related to it being a remake of a horror film).

In this riveting conversation with Sabrina Rani Furminger, Ken talks about making horror films for audiences who live in horrifying times, the bravery of Freedomite Doukhobors (and how their history impacted his short film), and what his recent experiment taught him about AI.

Episode sponsor: Fish Flight Entertainment

The wildly talented multi-hyphenate Mayumi Yoshida returns to the YVR Screen Scene Podcast to discuss her long-awaited feature film directorial debut, Akashi, which is inspired by Mayumi’s own experience of living in the space between cultures. Ten years after moving to Vancouver, struggling visual artist Kana (that’s Mayumi) returns to Tokyo to attend the funeral of her beloved grandmother. Arriving in Japan, she rekindles a tentative flame with her bashful ex-boyfriend, Hiro, an aspiring thespian who vanished from her life a decade prior. As Kana digs deeper into her grandmother’s past, she uncovers a family secret that prompts her to reconsider everything she thought she knew about love, duty, and belonging.

Akashi – which Mayumi wrote, directed, and starred in – has its world premiere this week at the 2025 Vancouver International Film Festival. The feature began its life as a Fringe Festival play in 2016, before evolving into a Storyhive-funded short film in 2017 (the latter for which she earned a slew of awards, including the award for Best Female Director at the 2018 Vancouver Short Film Festival, and the Outstanding Writer Award at the NBCUniversal Short Film Festival). Although it’s been a long road to bring Akashi to the screen in its current feature-length incarnation, Mayumi hasn’t been idle in the intervening years: between directing short films – including the music video for Different Than Before, which won the SXSW Music Video Jury Award in 2023 – and working as a dialect coach and cultural consultant and advocating for diversity and inclusion in our challenging industry, Mayumi has been fighting to get this film made. This included, in 2021, taking on Telefilm, Canada’s major funding provider, for their outdated language requirements that didn’t take Canada’s purported commitment to diversity and inclusion into consideration. In this riveting conversation with Sabrina Rani Furminger, Mayumi reflects on her journey to this moment, how Akashi changed over the years, and how Akashi changed her as an artist.

Episode sponsor: UBCP / ACTRA

What has the Taliban’s shocking return to power meant for Afghan women? Brishkay Ahmed’s new documentary In The Room hands the mic to Afghan women who’ve stepped onto the world stage and reclaimed their homeland and identity. This includes Brishkay herself, who literally steps through the looking glass and confronts and contextualises her own identity. At times dreamlike and always impactful, In The Room is at once a celebration of Afghan resistance, and a reminder that – in age where women’s rights are being gleefully eroded all over the world, including most notably south of our border – our autonomy as women must be actively protected. In The Room was produced through the National Film Board of Canada and has its world premiere at the 2025 Vancouver International Film Festival. In this wildly fascinating conversation with Sabrina Rani Furminger, Brishkay reflects on her own journey with her Afghan identity, the power of anger in activism and resistance, and the parallels she sees between what’s happened in Afghanistan and what’s currently occurring all over the world.

Episode sponsor: Fish Flight Entertainment

Today’s episode of the YVR Screen Scene Podcast is both another instalment in our ongoing #IndustryBFFs series AND our season opener! Sabrina is joined in the podcast studio by two powerhouse actresses who are uplifting women in film via their new project, the Liberated Actresses Playground: Aliyah O’Brien and Priscilla Faia. Returning guest Aliyah O’Brien is beloved for her work on Rookie Blue, Legends of Tomorrow, and You Me Her, for her beautiful smile, and her equally beautiful personality. Priscilla Faia is a new friend-of-the-pod but a veteran actress around town. You know her from You Me Her – for which she won a Leo Award for Best Performance in a Music, Comedy or Variety Program or Series – and for Rookie Blue, for which she was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award. In this rambunctious and at times emotional conversation (facilitated by vodka soda and the “airport drinking” paradigm), Aliyah and Priscilla discuss what it means to be a liberated actress, how their friendship has helped them navigate this sometimes unfriendly industry, and why women are stronger when we stand together. Episode sponsor: UBCP / ACTRA