HRFF+ Presents: Coming Around

Join JAYU for the Toronto premiere of Sandra Itäinen’s Coming Around.

Coming Around follows 28-year-old Eman as she weighs the decision to come out to her devout Muslim mother. She is a second-generation Palestinian-Egyptian who lives in Brooklyn. Having grown up in Columbia, MO with her mother and sister, the three women share a tight-knit bond that Eman desperately wants to maintain. But despite being a scholar and visibly “out” among her queer Muslim friends, Eman sits uncomfortably in silence when it comes to her mother. To postpone coming out, she makes the difficult choice to marry her current boyfriend, Q, to give the appearance of strictly cis-hetero relationship interests. The main arc of the film is one epic drive from St. Louis airport to Columbia on the evening that Eman comes out of the closet to her mom, and the film unfolds between that drive and the events that lead up to it, crisscrossing past, present, and future timelines within a frame of non-linearity.

The film will be presented with Rayka Zehtabchi and Shaandiin Tome’s A Long Line of Ladies be followed with a special Q&A.

Please note: The venue is wheelchair accessible and the film will have open captions. An ASL interpreter will be provided at the event upon request. Please email info@jayu.ca to request an interpreter. While they will do their best to accommodate, notifying them by December 1st gives them the best chance to book an interpreter in time for this event.