Shiraz Ahmed (producer/director/editor) is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, journalist and visual artist. His work addresses social inequities, marginalization and the unending attempt to better our world. His artistic practice subverts dominant narratives prevalent in popular discourse through satirical and surrealist image-making and social commentary in film, photography and writing. He works with communities misrepresented due to religious, racial or economic discrimination and attempts to correct for visual biases found in his research. He has reported on housing, healthcare and social service programs at news organizations in Memphis, Detroit and his home state of Texas. Ahmed’s short documentary film, The Safety Net, (2023) was selected for the Prison City Film Festival, Freep Film Festival and won Best Documentary at the Duke Independent Film Festival. He has participated in fellowships with NBC Universal, Kartemquin Educational Films, the New York Foundation for the Arts and Documenting Detroit. He is a graduate of Duke University (MFA Experimental and Documentary Arts, ‘24) and Northwestern University (BS Journalism, ‘13), and currently teaches as an Assistant Professor of Practice in the Southern Documentary Project at the University of Mississippi.

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ABOUT No Discount

As a pandemic exposes the cracks in Detroit’s safety net, three generations of Black Detroiters reveal how charity-based care keeps people alive in a city neglected by government and industry. But is charity a solution, or a symptom of a broken system?

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Film

No Discount

Program Affiliation

Firelight Fund

Cohort Year

2025

Website

shiraz-ahmed.com

Instagram

@heyshiraz