Private Project

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.

  • Anissa Boukili El Hassani
    Director
  • Anissa Boukili El Hassani
    Writer
  • Anissa Boukili El Hassani
    Producer
  • Safae Mounsif
    Key Cast
    "herself"
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    طائر الشمس
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Feature
  • Genres:
    Documentary
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 31 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    May 8, 2026
  • Production Budget:
    67,000 CAD
  • Country of Origin:
    Canada
  • Country of Filming:
    Canada, Morocco
  • Language:
    Arabic, English, French
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
Director Biography - Anissa Boukili El Hassani

Anissa Boukili El Hassani is a Moroccan-Canadian interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker based in Tio’tia:ke/Montreal. Working across documentary, installation, and electronic arts, her practice explores migration, interculturality, identity, and the social and environmental consequences of contemporary systems. Through fragmented narratives and intimate encounters, she examines the tensions between belonging, displacement, memory, and transformation.

She holds a BFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University. Her work has been presented at venues including the Society for Arts and Technology (SAT), Eastern Bloc, Milieux Institute, and the International Symposium on Electronic Art. She was awarded the ART X TECH X SCIENCE residency at Eastern Bloc and received the MIA grant from the Conseil des arts de Montréal.

Sunbirds is her first feature documentary.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

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. Some leave searching for possibility, while others remain and experience migration from afar.

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. Visually, I approached the film through gestures of beauty, accumulation, and intimacy, using domestic spaces, cityscapes, and collective encounters to create a portrait suspended between memory and displacement.

More than a search for answers, Sunbirds became a way to confront uncertainty. Through these encounters, I began to understand identity not as a fixed destination, but as something continuously negotiated between places, histories, and relationships.