All booked cast will be invited to an Industry Screening in December.
Writer(s) Bio:
Maryam Mir is a filmmaker with roots across Kashmir, Bahrain, Kenya and Canada. Through her films, she seeks to center the warmth & whimsy of her many communities. Her narrative short, SWEET REFUGE, starring Laith Nakli (from A24’s RAMY) and Mahira Kakkar (from Broadway’s LIFE OF PI), screened at 50+ festivals, won 10 awards, including a Directors Guild of America Student Film Award and was acquired by AMC+ as part of their Rising Stars series. Her latest short, GRANDMA SWIM, is gearing up for a 2026 festival run, with support from the Doha Film Institute. Maryam holds an MFA in Filmmaking from the Graduate Film Program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she was awarded the Ang Lee scholarship.
She is currently developing her debut feature, SAPNA (DREAM), through the 2025 Sundance Institute | Walt Disney Studios Artist fellowship and 2026 Norman Jewison Directing Program at the Canadian Film Centre. She is a prior recipient of Oscar-winning filmmaker Riz Ahmed’s Pillars Artist Fellowship (sponsored by Netflix), Marcie Bloom’s Film Fellowship (supported by Sony Pictures Classics) and the Canadian Women Artist Award from the New York Foundation for the Arts.
There’s just one problem: Usma is a baker. She can follow a recipe to the gram, but cooking is intuitive, messy and impossible to confine. So she relies on her only friends: the spirits of the women who live inside her rare collection of inherited cookbooks. Today, Musa brings over his late mother Sabeena’s old cookbook, Our Feast, but has no interest in helping Usma recreate her famous biryani...Until he discovers the spirits inside the books, seeing a chance to summon his mom. Usma, meanwhile, is determined to keep him focused on the recipe - and avoid the grief she’s been trying not to feel. As they move through failed attempts, unexpected spirits and memories of Sabeena, Musa becomes increasingly desperate to bring her back, while Usma insists on getting the biryani right. What begins as an attempt to recreate Sabeena’s biryani becomes a way for them to reconnect with each other - and with the woman they’re both still learning how to live without.
Tonal reference: Amelie meets Matilda, Little Miss Sunshine
| Role type | Role | Gender & Age range |
| Lead | USMA | Female 45 - 60 Years old |
Description Female, 45-60 years old, South Asian. Usma, a self-taught baker by nature - precise, perfectionist, likes being in control. Her kitchen is her safe haven, her lifelong learning lab. She is particular and cares deeply about doing things “the right way”. Beneath this measured exterior, she doesn’t always trust her own instincts. She always needs to have a plan, unlike her more free-spirited sister, Sabeena. Usma should feel grounded, within the heightened nature of the magical world. She can be funny without being quirky, emotional without becoming overly sentimental.
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| Role type | Role | Gender & Age range |
| Lead | EILEEN | Female 25 - 70 Years old |
Description Female 25-70 years old, South Asian. Eileen was Sabeena’s classmate in culinary school, though she was older and quickly took on the role of mentor. Classically trained and deeply invested in technique, Eileen is opinionated, bossy and believes good cooking comes from discipline and repetition. Unlike Usma, whose precision comes from a need for control and reassurance, Eileen is confident in her expertise. She doesn’t second-guess herself: she second guesses everyone else. Beneath her generosity is a fiercely competitive streak, and she has never quite forgiven Sabeena for what she suspects was an appropriation of some of her recipes.
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