Nijla Mumin, who premiered her debut feature film, Jinn, at this year’s SXSW Film Festival, has won many accolades including the Special Jury Recognition Award for writing.

Already known on the indie film festival circuit for award winning shorts including Deluge and Two Bodies, the filmmaker was the first recipient of the Islamic Scholarship Fund's Film Grant in 2016. Mumin raised $25k through Kickstarter to make Jinn, starring Simone Missick, which tells the story of a black teenage girl exploring her identity amid her mother’s conversion to Islam, and later won the Best Screenplay prize at the 2018 American Black Film Festival. Most recently, Mumin directed an episode of Ava DuVernay’s series Queen Sugar, and is set to forge ahead with 'stories about black girls and women who find themselves between worlds and identities'.