Yasir Masood and Peter McCain’s “Snowfall” (2020) is a correspondence of poetic letters in Urdu between mother and son. Written seasons apart, their words dance around their shared emotions on migration and steadfastness, nostalgia and loss, belonging and distance, and horizons of potential futures so close, one might step into them.

Director’s Vision

My path has always been to expand and champion national conversations on the Muslim and South Asian experience. I draw from one of the oldest story trope frameworks: the loss of innocence. For some, innocence is lost with a first kiss or a parents’ divorce. For me, a Muslim child in Texas, it came on 9/11 – a coming of age that made me painfully aware of the perception of my identity, one I still unpack to this day. Cinema is my chance to have conversations with my younger self and to stare-down the day my Muslim identity became external and the many following days filled with familial and political trauma. My mission as an artist is to push conversations about race and religion in America toward universality, providing a future where American kids don’t question if their voice is heard.