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Samah Ali

is a film and television programmer based in New York City.

Born and raised in Toronto, Canada, Samah works at Academy Award qualifying festivals San Francisco International Film Festival and DOC NYC. She is the podcast host for The Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television’s Cinema Reignited and the Video Programming Manager at Stellar Entertainment.
 

More on her work

Active in the film industry for 13 years, Samah is the Senior Programmer of Shorts & DOC NYC U for DOC NYC and a Shorts Programmer at SFFILM. She previously worked at the Hot Docs Film Festival, Seattle International Film Festival, Nantucket Film Festival, Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, Future of Film Showcase, Black Femme Supremacy Film Festival, and Toronto International Film Festival. Samah actively serves as a Black Screen Office Board Member.

In 2017, Samah founded Sisterhood Media, an organization distributing short films on their native platform Sisterhood Media TV. Building it from the ground up, Samah has the unique expertise growing businesses fulfilling audiences’ needs. With Sisterhood Media, she maintained an active role in executive producing films, facilitating workshops, and providing thought leadership on the distribution process for filmmakers. After five years of business, Sisterhood Media shut down and leaves its legacy as a streamer focused on racialized audiences, a first of its kind in Canadian streaming history.

Using her experiences on programming and distribution, Samah works with filmmakers seeking distribution insights, festivals in need of programmers, and anything in between.

More on her education

Samah has a Bachelor of Honours in Women’s Studies & Feminist Research from Western University and a Masters of Arts in Screen Studies from the Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema at Brooklyn College within the City University of New York.