SUNBIRDS

After immigrating to Canada as a child, Anissa reflects on her relationship to Morocco and Quebec. Seeking to better understand what drives some people to leave their country while others choose to stay, she undertakes an inquiry within her community.

Accompanied by her friend Safae, she travels between Morocco and Quebec, meeting people whose lives have been shaped by migration. From young people who wish to leave, to those who have returned to live in Morocco, and members of the Moroccan diaspora in Quebec, each shares their relationship to departure, return, and belonging.

Blending testimonies, family moments, and participatory experiences, the film brings these voices into dialogue on both sides of the Atlantic. Through them emerges a collective reflection on identity, the feeling of home, and the many ways of inhabiting more than one world at once.

I arrived in Canada as a child and grew up between multiple cultural realities, never fully belonging to one place or another. For a long time, I carried a fragmented relationship to identity, language, and belonging. Sunbirds emerged from a personal need to understand this fracture: why people leave, what they hope to find elsewhere, and what remains behind after migration.

What began as a conversation with my parents gradually expanded into a broader dialogue with members of my community in both Morocco and Canada. As I listened to these stories, I realized migration could not be reduced to a single narrative. Within the same family coexist desires for freedom, economic survival, social mobility, grief, guilt, rejection, and attachment.

I wanted the film to exist in this tension rather than resolve it. The circular discussions, the coexistence of contradictory viewpoints, and the fragmentation of voices all reflect the complexity of the migratory experience itself.

Anissa Boukili El Hassani is a Moroccan-Canadian interdisciplinary artist based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Concordia University and develops a practice at the intersection of visual arts, digital media, and cinema.

Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions, notably at the Société des arts technologiques, the Milieux Institute, the Studio-Théâtre des Grands Ballets, and Galerie Parc Offsite. In 2025, she made her directorial debut with the short film Ode Marine. She continues this exploration with Sunbirds, her first feature-length documentary.

2026 — Sunbirds — 89 min
2025 — Ode Marine — 17 min