Prayer of the Wanderer Q&A

Filmmakers Jenna Bosco and Shayma Aziz in Conversation with Haytham Saqr

Jenna Mahmoud-Bosco

Jenna Mahmoud-Bosco (she/her) is filmmaker and actress from New Jersey. Her character-driven work centers women of color, marginalized communities, immigrants, and the experiences of being first generation in the USA. Her half hour comedy Lady Liberty was selected for the inaugural 2021 Black List Muslim List, a finalist for the 2020 Warner Brother’s Writer’s Workshop, as well as a second rounder of the episodic labs at Sundance, the Black List x WIF, and the Austin FF. She is a recipient of the 2021 New Jersey Council on the Art’s Individual Artist Fellowship in screenwriting. Jenna is the creator and star of New Heights Webseries, which was an official selection at NYC Webfest, Brooklyn Webfest, New Media Film Festival and the Black Woman Film Festival. She recently wrote, produced and directed a short film, Baladi (My Country), which premiered at the 2020 Big Apple Film Festival and won best short in the women filmmakers’ category. In March 2022 it won the Audience Award at Mosquers Film Festival. Jenna is currently developing a coming of age feature film and comedy pilot. Her recent acting credits include NBC’s New Amsterdam, NBC’s The Blacklist, and CBS’ Tommy. In her spare time, Jenna enjoys being with friends, taking care of her plants and making travel films.

Jenna Mahmoud-Bosco

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Shayma Aziz

Shayma Aziz is a New York-based multi-disciplinary artist whose work centralises and rethinks the feminine diasporic body, its representation in mythology, folk belief and its multifaceted existence in the modern world. Born in Asyut, Egypt, Aziz’s artistic approach is informed by her study of ancient Egyptian art, film and international contemporary practices. She obtained her BFA in painting from Luxor University, where she investigated representational formats in ancient Egyptian art before she moved to Cairo and actively engaged in its growing art and independent film scene for well over a decade. She moved to New York after 8 years of the Arab uprisings, where she obtained her MFA in Studio Art at the City College of New York. Aziz works on decolonising materials like oil paints and canvas in her painting work. She experiments with printmaking, stop-motion animation and video performance in expressing the diasporic body and how it lives in liminality in her multi-media and storytelling work. Her work has been exhibited widely in solo, and group shows and festivals in Cairo, Alexandria, New York, Thessaloniki, Beirut, Tunis, Amsterdam and Marseilles. Throughout her career, she received production and residency grants including City Artists Corps Grant, NYC, Al Mawred Al Thaqafi’s Production Grant, Centre d’Arte I Natura’s residency program, L’officina Marseille residency and production grant, Siwa Studios Residency, 3rd place prize at Caravan’s Global Mosaic exhibition and CCNY Provost’s Prize in Art.

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