I’ve been here for like 5 years. When I came to Toronto, I was only coming to visit, because I was a well known actor and activist back home (Baghdad, Iraq). I talk about human rights, you know shit there is crazy, but the people there are like the people here. People are people. They love life, they love to express themselves, they want to enjoy their lives, they want better for themselves. There’s a lot of positivity that no one knows about. So when they killed the gays in 2011 (in Iraq), in a horrible way… As artists we wanted to talk about it. No ones saying anything. So we made the movie (The Society: a short film about homosexuality in Baghdad) in 2011. But who wants to screen it? No one because we’ll be killed for it. Until 2015, we got an offer to screen it at Cannes…This is Cannes, this is the dream…Cannes gave it great exposure and so TIFF saw it and put it in their Short Cuts program. So anyway I came here in September 2015, just you know, suits, red carpets, TIFF, its amazing! While screening the movie they (the Iraqi Government) went to my father and they tell him if I come back they want to kill me…They tell him I’m faggot, blah blah blah, that I won’t make it into heaven, he’s against us.
My father he is a very big comedian actor as well, and he was scared for our family. I was like “fuck them, this is my home, I’m coming back, I have a lot of work.” And my dad is like “no it’s not game..we’ll be threatened as well”…So I stayed in Toronto.
It was really hard at the beginning because I don’t know how to speak any English at that time. So I found a place in North York and the people I lived with are all gays. They’re amazing. I told them my story and they welcomed me… I went to ESL school, it was like a comic show, like all these people from all over the world, no one knows how to speak English properly, it was crazy.
I started learning the language but…still I want to be an actor, I want to come back to my field, back to my career. It was hard at the beginning. Took me 2 years to just find my way. Then I got an amazing grant from TAC (Toronto Art Council). They created a mentorship program for refugees and immigrants. So they hooked me up with my mentor Jeremy Smith; he’s an amazing guy. He introduced me to people in the theatre…But with film it was really hard and is still hard. I have an agent, but I don’t know a lot of people. You know the field, if you don’t know people, people won’t recommend you. I’m still working step by step.
I am happy now. I feel its meant to be to be here. Canada is the best country. I’m so happy, so proud, because my family hopefully will be here too, but they got exiled too because of what I did… I thought doing the society was a risk to myself because you know I was single, didn’t have kids, and I thought, if anything happens I will take responsibility. But I didn’t imagine that it would impact my family. My father was a very big actor, my little sister was a very famous singer..we were known in the community and the country, so I didn’t imagine they would chase them out. When that happened, that was really killing me, like I felt so guilty. I lost a lot of weight, I was like “what the fuck did I do” I’m here in a safe place, and they’re there and they’ve lost everything and been exiled to Turkey. But I support them financially just to make things easier for them. Now hopefully they are coming before the New Year…I feel I really belong to Canada.
UPDATE: Since this quote Ahmed’s Family has made it to Toronto and are settling in to life in Canada.
Credit for The Society: Directed by Osama Rasheed