How is it when you are born in a city and before you can have your first memories from this city you have to become a refugee in country 12,747 km away? When you become adult would you care about the home of your ancestor?
Asha Siad is a living proof of what a refugee can do if she has the right environment to develop herself. She is a Somali born but Canada raised Journalist and filmmaker with lots of awards for her young age. She was born in Mogadisu Somalia but came with her family as a refugee when she was small in Canada.
Asha was a recipient of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) News World’s Joan Donaldson Scholarship in 2013, an award that honors eight young journalists in Canada who demonstrate strong potential for producing journalism. She has contributed to CBC News, Shaw TV, Frontiere News (Italy), Hiiraan Online and The Calgary Journal. She has hosted and produced a three-part documentary series for Shaw TV Calgary that follows the lives of everyday Canadians attempting to start a new beginning. Through her work, she strives to find “global and local stories that allow us to connect with the rest of the world.”
Together with her sister, Roda, she runs Borderless Films, an independent production company dedicated to creating films that promote social change. Their projects include :
- Beyond the Silence (2013, documentary)
- Living at the Border (2014, documentary)
- 19 Days (2016, documentary short)
- Memories of Mogadishu (2020, documentary)
I met Asha Siad in 2017 in the first Conference for Migration and Media Awareness in Hamburg. I noticed her first from her work, a very sweet but also informative short film about the first days of the refugees welcome procedure in Canada. I still remember a scene where a refugee from Africa saw and felt for the first time in his life snow. At that time I interviewed her for the OEINS project Radio Globale. Unfortunately the interview was never shown.
Her 3 last films are connected in a way with different stages of migration and she will start also her 4th film with another concept. I had a nice talk with her during the Second Conference of Migration and Media Awareness in Hamburg on October 2021 for the We Migrants initiative. An interview that you can see here in We Migrants.
