Farewell Strange Hotel

Ben E. Wood (he/they) is a disabled artist and media-maker in East York whose experiences fill out a whimsical body of work playing in the tension between misery and joy. Through experiments with technology, improvisation and new-found acceptance of lived experience, Ben has built something of a catharsis-fueled time machine. Ben’s new recoverycore concept album is called Farewell Strange Hotel, and it’s a dreamlike companion to 2024’s immersive psychosis episode, a 4-week hospitalization and its associated recovery efforts afterwards. It seeks to laugh and cry at the same time, covering both the manic frantic fear and the measured thoughtful resolutions.

Tanushree Das graduated from the University of Calcutta with a Masters in English Literature, and began her career as a theatre person – directing as well as acting. In 2011 Tanushree graduated from the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune, with a Diploma in Film Editing. Tanushree‘s work as an editor has been screened to critical acclaim in film festivals around the world, including at Berlin, Locarno, Rotterdam, Rome, Pingyao, Hot Docs and Busan.

Born in Bangalore, Saumyananda Sahi studied philosophy at St Stephens College, Delhi before attending the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune. Saumyananda has worked as a cinematographer on a variety of projects, both factual and fiction, which have gone on to screen and win awards at festivals such as Cannes, Berlin, Sundance, Locarno and Rotterdam. He has been nominated for an Asia Pacific Award, Filmfare Award and was selected for the BAFTA Breakthrough India programme in 2022. His recent work includes ‘All That Breathes’ (nominated for an Academy Award) and the Netflix series ‘Black Warrant’.

Najiba NOORI was born in 1995 in Bamiyan, Afghanistan. She began working for media organizations as a volunteer when she was just 15. She has reported for various organizations and agencies, including the AFP, Huffington Post, MSF, FMIC, NRC and UN Women in Afghanistan. She participated in the Close-Up program 2020-2021 and at the IDFA Academy in 2022. She joined AFP as a video journalist in 2019. In 2021, she was obliged to leave her country when the Taliban took power in Afghanistan, and now lives in France. Writing Hawa is her first documentary.

KAREN CHAPMAN (Writer/Director/Producer) At the service of every story, award-winning filmmaker Karen Chapman strives to center work that is grounded in storytelling and impact. Chapman holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University and is an alumnus of the Norman Jewison’s Canadian Film Centre’s – Director’s Lab, the Banff Centre for the Arts, Women in the Director’s Chair, and the CaribbeanTales Incubator Pitch Winner, HotDocs Accelerator, The TIFF Talent Lab, TIFF Accelerator and Every Story Accelerator. She is also a recipient of the 2023 Micki Moore Fellowship. 

Her Canadian Film Centre’s thesis film, Measure, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2019 and won the International Hollywood Foreign Press and Residency Award at the 2020 Golden Globe Awards as well as the CineFilm’s Best Overall Film, and Best Directing in 2020 at the Women in Film and Television – Toronto Showcase. Chapman’s Quiet Minds Silent Streets premiered at the 2022, Toronto International Film Festival and received the award for best Documentary at the Canadian Film Festival along with winning Best Mental Health, Non-Fiction Film at the Yorkton Film Festival and a Silver Medal at the 2024 Anthem Awards.

Registered Social Worker, Psychotherapist, Mediator, and Workplace Mental Health & Sexual Violence Consultant

Nada Johnson is a highly respected Registered Social Worker and Psychotherapist (MSW, RSW), Family and Workplace Mediator, EMDR-trained Therapist, Certified Racial Trauma Clinician, and Workplace Mental Health and Sexual Violence Consultant at Nada Johnson Consulting & Counselling Services.

With nearly a decade of experience, Nada has established herself as a leader renowned for her deep expertise and compassionate approach across private practice, corporate, and community sectors. She provides virtual clinical counselling across Canada to women coping with the impacts of childhood trauma, racism and discrimination, and low self-esteem. She also provides group facilitation and organizational consulting locally and globally, helping individuals and institutions address trauma, gender inequality, and inequities, racial equity, and mental well-being with insight and integrity.

A passionate advocate for trauma-informed and culturally responsive care, on an individual and group facilitation level, Nada works collaboratively with clients to uncover their strengths and navigate life’s challenges. Her holistic approach recognizes the interconnectedness of race, culture, faith, identity, and lived experience in shaping mental health and resilience.

Nada earned a Master’s in Social Work from York University, an Honours Bachelor of Arts (with Distinction) in Sociology and Women’s and Gender Studies from the University of Toronto, and a Family Mediation Certificate from Herzing College. She has also earned advanced certificates in Diversity & Inclusion from Seneca Polytechnic and Minnesota State University.

She is proud to serve as a panelist for The Village Keepers panel discussion, contributing her professional insight on Black mental health, trauma, income inequality, and resilience—topics that reflect both her expertise and her unwavering commitment to community healing.

Keisha Greene is a Registered Psychotherapist and Clinical Supervisor based in Toronto, Canada, and is currently an adjunct professor and sessional lecturer at the University of Toronto in the Applied Psychology and Human Development Program in the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education department.  Keisha has been a practicing clinician for over 10 years with BIPOC+ populations and has experience working with clients in community mental health, outpatient mental health and private practice.  Keisha’s research interests are in understanding how racialized individuals can be best served in the therapeutic process so that they achieve their desired outcomes.

Victor Stiff is a Toronto-based entertainment journalist and member of the Toronto Film Critics Association. He is the News Editor and Senior Critic at ThatShelf.com and host of UFO Movie Club on YouTube. Victor has contributed to the Canadian Academy, POV Magazine, Global News, The Playlist, Screen Rant, We Got This Covered, In the Seats, and Sordid Cinema. Victor received the TFCA’s 2019 Emerging Critic award and served as a jury member at the 49th Festival du nouveau cinéma. He’s currently a programmer for the Rendezvous With Madness Festival.

Since she was 10 years old child, she was writing poetry in her mother language Arabic. What inspired Ghadeer to write is nature, her father, love, longing, nostalgia, diaspora, her homeland Palestine, difficult emotions, hard feelings, trauma, feminism, freedom, liberation, human rights and justice.

Ghadeer is the founder of Toronto Poetry Club. She has organized inclusive and diverse multicultural multilingual open mic poetry nights in Toronto for 8 years. She has published her Arabic and English poetry in newspapers, magazines, exhibitions, including the anthology “Poetry ReRooted: Decolonizing Our Tongues” and in the anthology “To Hear The Birds” 

Ghadeer’s poem “Alhuwiyya (The Identity)” had been published in English in an anthology of “Muslim American Writers at Home” in San Francisco by Freedom Voices Publisher. It was about her 3 different identities contained within her while being in diaspora, relocating in different countries and her nostalgia to her homeland Palestine. She received a grant from The Toronto Arts Council to start a Multilingual Poetry Collective. 

Ghadeer is an Ontario Ambassador, Outreach to Arab speaking community of National Association of Adult Survivors of Child Abuse (NAASCA). She completed her BSc. in Computer Science and MBA at the American University of Sharjah in UAE. Her dream is to have her own house and host her poetry nights, under the name Qahwa Art Café, in its back or front yard in the Summer and in the basement in the Winter. “Qahwa” means coffee in Arabic.

Kelly Rose Pflug-Back is a writer and creative writing workshop facilitator. Her fiction, poetry, and journalism has appeared recently in publications like The Briarpatch, The Deadlands, and This Magazine, as well as anthologies such as Queer Little Nightmares (Arsenal Pulp, 2022) and Imaginarium: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing (ChiZine, 2012) . Their debut collection of poems, The Hammer of Witches (Caitlin Press/Dagger Editions, 2020), recently placed as a finalist in the upcoming Bisexual Book Awards.

Nicole Decsey is an emerging artist with a BFA in Performance Dance from Toronto Metropolitan University. She works as a performer, choreographer, and rehearsal director with multiple Toronto and Mississauga based companies such as Frog in Hand, Create Dangerously, Dance : Corps Company, and Human Body Expression. Nicole has trained in Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto and Mississauga with companies such as Transformation Danse, Addo Platform, The Toronto Community Love In, and Toes for Dance. Nicole struggles with body dysmorphia, anxiety and depression and uses her personal experiences to create her work.

Melissa MacTavish is a Toronto based dance artist who graduated from George Brown Dance with a Certificate and Diploma in 2019. Melissa has a deep appreciation for contemporary dance and acrobatics. She has performed with Beats and Intentions for Nuit Blanche and worked for Legends of Horror in 2019, performed works by Hanna Kiel and Syreeta Hector for The Fifths Summer Intensive in 2022, and most recently performed “We Lost You A Long Time Ago” with Nicole Decsey’s Dance Projects in August 2023 and performed “Listen, this will be fun” by Teagan Ariss for The Garage’s 2023 Showing.

As a professional composer and instrumentalist with over 20 years of experience, Luc Gaylie has honed their craft through international tours with St. Michael’s Choir, performances as a member of award-winning band Jammers Waffle House, and a long history of music directing for theatre and dance shows. With a deep passion for creating music that elevates the art of dance, Luc Gaylie is grateful for the opportunity to work with talented choreographer Nicole Decsey and her talented dancers

Shane Belcourt is a four-time CSA-nominated Director, with award-winning narrative and documentary works in both film and TV.  He has directed three narrative feature films, TKARONTO (which was showcased in both the TIFF Indigenous Cinema Retrospective and the UCLA Film & Television Archive traveling exhibition, “Through Indian Eyes: Native American Cinema”); RED ROVER (premiered at the Whistler Film Festival and can be found on Amazon Prime  Currently, Shane is directing the feature documentary NADAAMAAIS which received Telefilm funding and set for release in 2025; and is a co-creator and co-showrunner (with Tasha Hubbard) of a premium narrative mini-series in development with CBC titled, STONECHILD.