The wildly talented multi-hyphenate Mayumi Yoshida returns to the YVR Screen Scene Podcast to discuss her long-awaited feature film directorial debut, Akashi, which is inspired by Mayumi’s own experience of living in the space between cultures. Ten years after moving to Vancouver, struggling visual artist Kana (that’s Mayumi) returns to Tokyo to attend the funeral of her beloved grandmother. Arriving in Japan, she rekindles a tentative flame with her bashful ex-boyfriend, Hiro, an aspiring thespian who vanished from her life a decade prior. As Kana digs deeper into her grandmother’s past, she uncovers a family secret that prompts her to reconsider everything she thought she knew about love, duty, and belonging.

Akashi – which Mayumi wrote, directed, and starred in – has its world premiere this week at the 2025 Vancouver International Film Festival. The feature began its life as a Fringe Festival play in 2016, before evolving into a Storyhive-funded short film in 2017 (the latter for which she earned a slew of awards, including the award for Best Female Director at the 2018 Vancouver Short Film Festival, and the Outstanding Writer Award at the NBCUniversal Short Film Festival). Although it’s been a long road to bring Akashi to the screen in its current feature-length incarnation, Mayumi hasn’t been idle in the intervening years: between directing short films – including the music video for Different Than Before, which won the SXSW Music Video Jury Award in 2023 – and working as a dialect coach and cultural consultant and advocating for diversity and inclusion in our challenging industry, Mayumi has been fighting to get this film made. This included, in 2021, taking on Telefilm, Canada’s major funding provider, for their outdated language requirements that didn’t take Canada’s purported commitment to diversity and inclusion into consideration. In this riveting conversation with Sabrina Rani Furminger, Mayumi reflects on her journey to this moment, how Akashi changed over the years, and how Akashi changed her as an artist.

Episode sponsor: UBCP / ACTRA

What has the Taliban’s shocking return to power meant for Afghan women? Brishkay Ahmed’s new documentary In The Room hands the mic to Afghan women who’ve stepped onto the world stage and reclaimed their homeland and identity. This includes Brishkay herself, who literally steps through the looking glass and confronts and contextualises her own identity. At times dreamlike and always impactful, In The Room is at once a celebration of Afghan resistance, and a reminder that – in age where women’s rights are being gleefully eroded all over the world, including most notably south of our border – our autonomy as women must be actively protected. In The Room was produced through the National Film Board of Canada and has its world premiere at the 2025 Vancouver International Film Festival. In this wildly fascinating conversation with Sabrina Rani Furminger, Brishkay reflects on her own journey with her Afghan identity, the power of anger in activism and resistance, and the parallels she sees between what’s happened in Afghanistan and what’s currently occurring all over the world.

Episode sponsor: Fish Flight Entertainment

Today’s episode of the YVR Screen Scene Podcast is both another instalment in our ongoing #IndustryBFFs series AND our season opener! Sabrina is joined in the podcast studio by two powerhouse actresses who are uplifting women in film via their new project, the Liberated Actresses Playground: Aliyah O’Brien and Priscilla Faia. Returning guest Aliyah O’Brien is beloved for her work on Rookie Blue, Legends of Tomorrow, and You Me Her, for her beautiful smile, and her equally beautiful personality. Priscilla Faia is a new friend-of-the-pod but a veteran actress around town. You know her from You Me Her – for which she won a Leo Award for Best Performance in a Music, Comedy or Variety Program or Series – and for Rookie Blue, for which she was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award. In this rambunctious and at times emotional conversation (facilitated by vodka soda and the “airport drinking” paradigm), Aliyah and Priscilla discuss what it means to be a liberated actress, how their friendship has helped them navigate this sometimes unfriendly industry, and why women are stronger when we stand together. Episode sponsor: UBCP / ACTRA