Directors’ Lab
A 12-session, in-person professional development program for filmmakers preparing to direct their first or next short film.
Applications for the second cohort open October 15.
If accepted, the $650 tuition fee + GST is due before the first session.
What is the Directors’ Lab?
Zameen Directors’ Lab is an in-person development program for emerging directors who are still shaping their creative voice and building the confidence, language, and practical tools needed to lead a narrative short film.
Across 12 sessions, each participant develops one project from an early idea or draft into a clearer screenplay, directorial package, pitch, and realistic production pathway.
This is the lab’s second cohort. Our first cohort — six directors — started in September 2026 and is in session now. Applications for the second cohort open October 15, and the lab runs January to April.
Clarify your voice
Understand the themes, references, audiences, and working methods that shape you as a director.
Develop your film
Strengthen the story, screenplay, visual approach, performance strategy, and pitch.
Plan the next step
Build a budget, schedule, collaborator map, financing approach, and production roadmap.
“The future is where the chaos of art meets the discipline of business.”
This lab begins with the layer that often remains unresolved: what you are trying to say, why it matters, who it is for, and how to carry that intention into a film other people can understand, support, and help make.
— Zameen Directors’ LabA mentor-driven lab, taught by working filmmakers.
Learn directly from working filmmakers.
The Directors’ Lab is built around close mentorship. You develop your project alongside professionals working across directing, production design, editing, cinema studies, and production. Seven mentors return for the second cohort.
Soheil Danesh Eshraghi
Soheil Danesh Eshraghi is an award-winning production designer, art director, and filmmaker with over two decades of experience across film, theatre, and video games. A graduate in Graphic Design from the University of Tehran’s Faculty of Fine Arts, he specializes in visual storytelling and building distinctive cinematic worlds.
His production design credits include feature films such as Once Upon a Time in Abadan, Killing a Traitor, and Day Zero, and he has also written and directed his own short films. His work has earned major honors including the Crystal Simorgh at the Fajr Film Festival and the Hafez Award. He is currently based in Vancouver, Canada.
Saeed Vahidi
Saeed Vahidi is an Iranian-Canadian filmmaker, editor, and educator based in Vancouver. He trained in film editing at the Film and Television Institute of India and has studied alongside artists such as Walter Murch and Abbas Kiarostami, developing both an artistic and a commercial approach to film.
His directorial debut, We Were There (2019), won awards at festivals including the Gold Remi at WorldFest-Houston, and as an editor he has received the 2026 CCE Award and a 2026 Leo Award. When he isn’t making films, Saeed mentors young editors — and, a true film lover, watches a movie every night before going to sleep.
William Brown
William Brown is an Associate Professor of Film at UBC and holds a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford. He is both a scholar and a filmmaker, with work spanning fiction, documentary, and the video-essay, and research rooted in film-philosophy and digital media.
His recent films App 666 and Cake and Death premiered at Vancouver’s Small File Media Festival and the DOXA Film Festival, and his video-essays have twice been named among the Sight & Sound Video-Essays of the Year. He teaches both film production and film history, and speaks regularly at the Cinematheque and the Vancouver International Film Festival.
Sina Moazeni
Sina Moazeni is a Vancouver-based producer and director and the founder of Helz Pictures. His practice is grounded in hands-on experience across British Columbia’s film ecosystem, guiding projects from early development all the way through production.
He brings a producer’s eye for feasibility and momentum — helping filmmakers turn creative intention into films that actually get made.
Heather Hawthorn Doyle
Heather Hawthorn Doyle is a television director and showrunner who has created and run half a dozen multi-season series and directed more than a thousand hours of scripted and unscripted, single- and multi-camera television — from series and specials to feature-length movies.
She is currently directing the second season of CBC’s hit multi-camera format The Assembly, and recently directed her twentieth feature television movie, Lifetime’s true-crime thriller I Am Mary Jo Buttafuoco. Heather has earned more than thirty national and international award wins and nominations, including the 2026 Canadian Screen Award for the pilot of The Assembly, featuring Howie Mandel.
Rylan Friday
Rylan Friday (Saulteaux Ojibway / Plains Cree / Métis, from Cote First Nation, Saskatchewan) is an award-winning director, writer, producer, and curator dedicated to honest LGBTQ2+ and Indigenous representation. Drawing on art-house cinema, they blend surrealism with grounded realism to draw out authentic performances.
Rylan produced Trevor Mack’s debut feature Portraits From a Fire — earning the Kevin Tierney Emerging Producer Award and a Leo Award for Best Motion Picture — and their short film Terror/Forming screened at VIFF, Māoriland, and imagineNATIVE, winning Best Short Horror Film at the 2023 London Independent Film Festival. They have also led VIFF’s Catalyst Mentorship Program and curated Indigenous film series with VIFF and the Museum of Vancouver.
Mila Zuo
Mila Zuo is an Associate Professor of Cinema Studies at UBC and a filmmaker whose practice moves between scholarship and screen work. Her research spans transnational Asian cinemas, film-philosophy, star studies, and critical theories of gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity, and she serves on the editorial board of Film-Philosophy.
Her book Vulgar Beauty: Acting Chinese in the Global Sensorium (Duke University Press, 2022) won the Association for Asian American Studies’ 2024 Outstanding Achievement award in media, performance, and visual studies. Her films include Carnal Orient (2016), which premiered at Slamdance, and Kin (2021); she is currently developing Mongoloids, a hybrid docu-fiction feature about the Chinese Cultural Revolution. She is a 2025 Killam Research Fellowship awardee.
Four phases, twelve sessions.
Each phase builds toward a complete director-facing pitch and production-readiness package. The second cohort meets on twelve Sundays, January to April — the same structure the first cohort is working through now.
The second cohort runs January to April. All lab sessions take place in person on Sundays from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm at Zameen Art House.
How the first cohort ran.
Six directors were selected from the 2026 round and are in session now, meeting every Sunday through December. The second cohort follows the same twelve-session shape.
Yes. This is the second cohort. The first cohort of six directors was selected in September 2026 and is working through the twelve sessions now, meeting every Sunday through December. The second cohort runs January to April, with applications opening October 15.
No. Previous directing experience is not required. What matters most is a clear intention to direct and a genuine passion for developing your voice and project as a filmmaker.
No. You may apply with an idea, treatment, early draft, or stalled project. Accepted participants must be prepared to develop a complete short-film screenplay during the lab.
Yes. One previous film does not automatically make the program unsuitable. The question is whether you still need structured support to define your voice, lead a narrative project, and build a complete production-readiness package.
Each class is capped at six participants. This protects project attention, peer continuity, and the workload required for meaningful feedback.
No. The lab develops the filmmaker and project toward production readiness. It does not guarantee financing, crew, production, distribution, referrals, employment, or festival selection.
You do. Mentors and the program team advise, question, and offer feedback. Participants remain responsible for all final creative and production decisions.
You retain all ownership and copyright. Participation gives Zameen, facilitators, and mentors no option, revenue share, production right, or ownership interest in your project. Any promotional use of participant materials requires separate permission.
Everyone who accesses participant projects must sign a confidentiality agreement. Scripts, ideas, materials, feedback, and private cohort discussions may not be shared outside the program without the project owner’s permission.
The class combines guided group development, peer feedback, mentor input, scheduled one-on-one consultations, and a final project review. Exact scheduling and submission limits appear in the participant agreement.
No. Participants may discuss personal experience when they choose, but the lab never requires private disclosure or trauma-based material. Filmmaker identity is developed through professional creative choices and working methods.
Attendance matters because each project depends on continuity and peer contribution. Final absence, withdrawal, and refund rules will appear in the participant agreement.
Applicants may contact Zameen privately regarding access or accommodation needs. Available accommodations will be confirmed before acceptance.
Apply to the second cohort.
Applications open October 15. The application submission is free.