SWEET REFUGE courses a passionate Syrian baker as he spends his first Eid in the US attempting to sell the sweet he’s spent his lifetime perfecting: walnut baklava. As he roams the streets of Brooklyn, he bumps into a savvy Indian ladoo maker, who’s figured out how to appeal to one of New York’s health-conscious Brooklynites.

Festivals & awards:

Jury Award for Best Asian American Student Film - Director's Guild of America

Official Selection - Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival 2023

Filmmaker bio:

Maryam Mir is a writer/director currently pursuing her MFA in Film Production at NYU Tisch, where she is an Ang Lee Scholar. As a Kashmiri-Canadian born in Germany, raised in Bahrain, with Kenyan ancestry, Maryam has always found inspiration in stories that center the immigrant experience in all its joy, delight and magic. She is a UCP Thousand Miles Project Workshop Participant '22, a NYFA Canadian Women Artists’ Awardee '22 and a Gotham Marcie Bloom Fellow '23. Her latest short film, Sweet Refuge, starring Laith Nakli and Mahira Kakkar, was recently awarded a Jury Award at the Director's Guild of America Student Film Awards, an Canadian Woman Artists' Award from the New York Foundation of the Arts and a distribution grant from the Islamic Scholarship Fund.