Finding Hope
Across continents and generations, storytellers have carried the quiet work of healing, turning memory into meaning and hardship into pathways of hope. Finding Hope honors artists whose work helps communities endure, reconnect, and rehumanize experience, especially where lives have been overlooked or simplified by mainstream narratives.
These short films invite viewers into intimate lived worlds where art becomes a lifeline and storytelling becomes a practice of dignity and repair. Each story opens a conversation for communities and audiences longing for authentic, unfiltered truth, expanding perception and strengthening resilience through human encounter.
Through this work, we aim to help communities not only be seen, but to reframe their own stories that the world has not yet learned to hear.
The First Story: Hope Azeda
Set in post-genocide Rwanda, the story follows the inspiring journey of Hope Azeda, a Rwandese artist and survivor. The film celebrates the power of art and culture as transformative forces and serves as a tribute to those who seek hope amidst injustice and hardship worldwide. It was screened To be released in the summer of 2024, in memory of the 30th anniversary of one of humanity’s darkest pages – the Rewanda genocide (1994).
The Second Story: Nisha Abdulla
A Bengali performance artist rooted in the lived experience of her people, Nisha Abdulla brings theatre into the streets, courtyards, and community centres of Bengal’s most vulnerable Muslim neighbourhoods. Her work meets the social boundaries that fracture daily life, using theatre to restore dignity, relationship, and collective healing. This short film follows Nisha’s journey: her devotion to community, her struggle for justice, and her belief that art can return dignity to those who have been pushed to the margins, including her own. This film is in development.
