Today, the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) announces the 2025 cohort of its Building Bridges Documentary Fund, which will award a total of US$1 million and wraparound services to support 13 documentary film projects intended to represent a fuller spectrum of the U.S. Muslim experience.
Notable recipients include Assia Boundaoui’s (The Feeling of Being Watched, an IDA Enterprise grantee) sophomore feature, Within Sight and Sound, which follows a year of anti-war activism in Chicago; former IDA funds director and producer Poh Si Teng’s (St. Louis Superman) feature directorial debut, an untitled project featuring the work and lives of three American doctors in a Gaza hospital. In addition, the Fund extended support to Watermelon Pictures’ untitled Gazan journalist project, which was previously awarded as a short film and is now being presented at pitch forums as a feature.
Previously, Documentary covered the announcement of the Fund and the ethos behind its artist support. In addition to the project funding, the 16 filmmaker grantees will receive “exposure to a wide audience through CAAM’s distribution channels,” according to the press release, professional development opportunities, and travel as a cohort to Sundance, SXSW, Tribeca, and other festivals. The Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Foundation as a part of a larger Building Bridges initiative that includes programming at the previously mentioned festivals, to elevate nuances in U.S. Muslim storytelling in industry-facing spaces.
“Our partnership with the Center for Asian American Media creates a valuable platform for documentary filmmakers as they complete their projects,” says Maurine Knighton, Doris Duke Foundation’s chief program officer, in a prepared statement. “Documentaries give an unflinching view of some of the world’s most pressing issues, and we are pleased to have the opportunity to leverage the field to foster social cohesion. We are energized by the work that these cohorts are producing and look forward to witnessing all the grantees will accomplish in the next year.”
CAAM Building Bridges Documentary Fund Manager Leila Abu-saada praises the diversity of fund recipients. “It was an extremely competitive process to narrow down the submissions to these projects. Some of the films speak directly to the moment we’re living in, while others are a healing balm for the U.S. Muslim community. Together, they represent a dynamic collection of work by talented filmmakers who approach big stories with intimacy, care, and conviction.”
Still images from all the funded projects can be seen in this trailer. The list of all 2025 Building Bridges Documentary Fund recipients is as follows:
Amar Chebib, Untitled Islamophobia Documentary
A documentary mixtape deconstructs America’s love affair with Islamophobia by traversing the kaleidoscopic stories of those affected most.
Ambarien Alqadar, Inheritance
As her mother’s world recedes into silence due to degenerative hearing loss in India, a daughter—a first-generation immigrant in the U.S.—listens for what remains. How do traces of a home, a history and silence become parts of an inheritance from a mother and a motherland?
Andy Sarjahani, Iranian Hillbilly
Growing up in Arkansas, Andy masked his Iranian heritage to fit in, while his father and friend Bubba hid their pasts. As Andy’s father grapples with the aging process, they each find strength in breaking silence. Together, they unearth cultural histories, discovering vulnerability may be the most radical form of strength.
Anjali Kamat and Rehan Ansari, The Return
A Pakistani writer in Brooklyn is energized talking to his journalist friend from Queens as she documents anti-Muslim hate crimes in India and the resistance by young Muslim dissidents. He encourages her to confront her Islamophobic family, but her dismay about contemporary India forces him to face his demons: how he tried for years—against all odds—to build a life in India, as a refuge from both Pakistani authoritarianism and American Islamophobia.
Assia Boundaoui, Within Sight and Sound
Within Sight and Sound is a documentary that chronicles one year in the anti-war movement in the U.S., through the lens of an American Muslim community in Chicago, where thousands collectively protest for an end to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. History means both what happened, and what is said to have happened—alongside this chronicle we visually deconstruct the ways that power produces history and grapple with haunting echoes in the archives.
Lamia Lazrak, Dar Marjana
When restaurant owner Kenza decides she no longer wants to run her family restaurant in Marrakech, her eldest daughter documents her family as they grapple with letting go, in a story about identity, legacy and a restaurant’s mysterious power over a family.
Nimco Sheikhaden, The Angriest Black Man in America
The Angriest Black Man in America explores Philadelphia attorney Michael Coard’s often defiant defense work and his tireless fight to save clients from death row. Through an unfiltered lens, the film captures Coard’s unapologetic advocacy, navigating the complex intersections of race, justice, and community resilience.
Poh Si Teng, Untitled Doctor Documentary
When three American doctors enter Gaza to save lives, they find themselves caught between medicine and politics, risking everything to expose the truth.
Rafiuddin bin Jahangir and Michael R. Steves, The Heart Grows Old in Autumn
A multi-generational tale following Rohingya refugees who survived a genocide in Myanmar as they establish a new life in the U.S. Spanning six years and three generations, the documentary follows the first Rohingya-Americans as they rebuild their lives, and are reborn from the ashes of genocide.
Rialda Zukic, Tanana
Nearly three decades after their siblings and other family members were brutally killed by Serbs in Srebrenica, Bosnia—Muharem and Zejna return to their native village to rebuild the family’s home that was destroyed during the war. The couple, and their daughter, Rialda, reflect on their shared sense of belonging to the land and their desire to reclaim it.
Samia Khan, The Banker's Daughter (working title)
The Banker’s Daughter follows filmmaker Samia Khan as she investigates the forced closure of BCCI–a global bank from Pakistan that was called the world’s largest criminal organization. Her investigation reveals how power works, and the devastating effects the scramble for power in a post-Cold War world had on this institution, the Developing World, and her family.
Sara Chishti, Taxi Driver
Amid crippling debt and relentless exploitation, New York City’s immigrant taxi drivers fight to reclaim their humanity and the American Dream, navigating a city-sanctioned medallion lending scheme that has left their community in financial ruin.
CAAM’s Building Bridges Documentary Fund previously supported this film as a short, and provided funding for the feature.
Untitled Documentary from Watermelon Pictures
A Gazan journalist uses their page to document the unfolding atrocities.
Editor's Note, November 25, 2025: Andy Sarjahani's logline has been updated.
