2026 Reel Asian TV Writing Program Participants

Sara Jade Alfaro-Dehghani

Sara Jade Alfaro-Dehghani is an Iranian–Mexican writer and filmmaker raised in 1990’s Oshawa, Ontario—a cultural dead zone she insists built character. At 12, armed with an Olympia typewriter and no plans for the summer, she wrote her first memoir.

Sara’s work blends apocalyptic suburban teenage memories with the playfulness and whimsy of her Montreal salad days. With a background in dance and music, she brings a strong sense of rhythm and physicality to the screen.

A self-described “1950’s newsie” at heart, Sara loves the chase: digging for scoops, investigating characters, and building story worlds that balance absurdity with emotional precision. She has an obsession with blended cultural experiences, subjective memory, time capsules, language barriers, and distinctly off-kilter Canadiana. Her filmmaking goes hand in hand with her work in education and community arts, as she balances her own craft with teaching workshops and mentoring creative young people in the arts, as well as serving on the board of directors for the Center of Contemporary Art in Seattle.
She has directed a Super Bowl commercial, shot and directed Taika Waititi, and has a short film currently playing as in-flight entertainment. She is now developing her first feature.

Off set, she tends to her 50,000 bees and one koi fish.

Accolades:
Awards for short film After All These Years (How Could I Possibly Go Back Out There):

• Screenwriting Award Winner – Women in Film and Television Showcase

Awards & festivals for short film Hair!:

• Official Selection (upcoming) – Aesthetica International Film Festival
• Scandinavian International Film Festival, Reel Asian International Film Festival, Breakthroughs Film Festival, Future of Film Showcase, Canadian Film Fest, The Circuit Cinema
• MENA Film Festival Grant Winner
• Breakthroughs Award Winner
• Air Canada Short Film Award

TV Project Title: The Olde Guard

Logline: In the cutthroat world of Niagara Falls dinner theatre, the aging King facing obsolescence and his ambitious young replacement forge an unlikely alliance in their fight for survival, exposing darkly ridiculous power struggles behind Canada’s most beloved fantasy franchise.

Srutika Sabu

Srutika Sabu (she/they) is a recovering doctor-turned-clown, writer, and multidisciplinary artist who uses absurdity and whimsy to tell stories that are funny and quietly heartbreaking at once. Trained in clown at Sweet Action Theatre, she created drag king persona Santosh Santosh and developed musical comedy Neptune’s With A Fish. She’s been honing her storytelling practice through selective emerging artist programs including ArtWorksTO, Buddies in Bad Times’ Emerging Creators Unit, Paprika Festival’s Creative Producers Unit, Factory Theatre’s TEPs intensive and Nightwood Theatre’s Shadow Residency. She’s now developing a musical called My Beef with Beef with support from the Canada Council of Arts and the National Centre for New Musicals at Theatre Aquarius. Galaxy Pants, which she wrote, directed, composed, and animated, is her first short film that was selected for the Comedy Ignitor Challenge Showcase at Canadian Film festival. She also produced and directed the documentary webseries Fairy Trans Parent, a series about newcomer/refugee trans relationships which is an official TOWebfest selection.

Accolades:
Film awards:

• Official Can Film Fest/Firecracker Department Comedy Ignitor Showcase Selection for Galaxy Pants
• Official TOWebfest Selection for Fairy Trans Parent

Theatre awards:

• WTFestival Strange Maker Award 2026 at the Toronto Fringe Theatre Festival for best clown show.
• Mahendra Joshi Playwriting Award winner by SAWITRI Theatre

TV Project Title: Peaked

Logline: The ghost of a girlboss tech executive fails to haunt her husband and childhood rival as they make a legacy-defining documentary about recovering her corpse from Everest. But the down-on-her luck cinematographer who can see her has a question: why is she still fighting for the man who left her on the mountain?

Jaskaran Singh

Brampton born and Jersey raised, Jaskaran Singh is a Sikh-Canadian filmmaker whose work explores identity, belonging, and inclusion, with a focus on bringing South Asian voices and experiences to the screen. His short films include A TURBAN & A BEARD, ME|HER, and COPELESS, exploring Sikh identity, love, generational trauma, guilt, and grief. His debut feature, JERSEY BOY, is the culmination of that exploration, a deeply personal story inspired by his experience growing up in the aftermath of 9/11. The screenplay was a Quarterfinalist for the 2022 Academy Nicholl Fellowships, named to The CAPE List in 2021 (curated by The Black List), and won the 2020 Whistler Film Festival Power Pitch. Now completed, JERSEY BOY premiered at CAAMFest 2026 and will make its Canadian Premiere at iSAFF 2026.

Accolades:

• JERSEY BOY has screened at CAAMFest 2026, Bentonville Film Festival 2026, and will be having its Canadian Premiere at iSAFF 2026.
• Other shorts have played IFFSA Toronto, iSAFF, MISAFF, VAFF, and CSAFF.

TV Project Title: There Are No Heroes

Logline: The son of a drunk and abusive Indian psychic goes back in time to kill his father, and must come to terms with his superhuman abilities. When he discovers others have transformed their childhood trauma into extraordinary powers, he must protect them from a world determined to destroy what it doesn’t understand.

Claudine Yip

Claudine Yip is a writer from Vancouver whose stories tend to focus on children of immigrants finding love in all its forms and against all mishaps. She was a participant in Ins Choi’s sitcom writing workshop, an Annick Press editorial mentee, and her TV pilots have been recognized by CAPE and Script Pipeline. As a screenwriter for vertical microdramas, her series have collectively gained over 100 million views. She holds a BFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and an MFA in Dramatic Writing from New York University.

Accolades:

• 2026: Finalist, CAPE New Writers Fellowship: My Campus Disaster (half-hour dramedy pilot)
• 2025: Quarterfinalist, Script Pipeline TV Competition: My Campus Disaster (half-hour dramedy pilot)
• 2025: Finalist, Canadian Short Screenplay Competition: What We Left Behind (short film)
• 2024: Semifinalist, GEMFest International Screenplay Competition: ABCs (half-hour comedy pilot)

TV Project Title: Eternal Affairs

Logline: When a woman unexpectedly dies the day before her 29th birthday, she’s in for the shock of her afterlife when her ashes are sold into a ghost marriage with a dead man she’s never met. To escape the arrangement, she strikes a deal with a grim reaper, only to grow closer to her new husband while unraveling the truth behind their entangled pasts.

Mayumi Yoshida

Mayumi Yoshida is a Japan-born, globally raised Director, Actor, Writer, and Producer based in Vancouver, BC. An alumna of Women in the Director’s Chair, WBD Access × Canadian Academy Writers & Directors Programs, TIFF Writer’s Studio, and the TIFF Netflix Talent Accelerator Fellowship. She has earned acclaim for her deeply personal, emotionally grounded storytelling.

Accolades:

Awards for feature film Akashi:

• 2025: Winner, Borsos Competition Best Canadian Feature, Best Cinematography, Best BC Director, Best Performance (Mayumi Yoshida), Haebler Award (Best Female Director), Whistler Film Festival
• 2025: Winner, Audience Choice Award, Vancouver International Film Festival
• 2025: Winner, Osler Best First Feature Award, Toronto Reel Asian Film Festival
• 2025: Winner, Best Director Award, Best Editing Award, Best Cinematography Award, Audience Choice Best Performance Award, Vancouver Asian Film Festival

TV Project Title: Homestaying

Logline: With the arrival of a new homestay AYANA, a group of misfit immigrants in East Van form an unlikely family and deal with their dreams, relationships, and identity as they try to find a place to belong in their home away from home.