Raza Tariq is a London-based writer and director. He uses his films to heighten his consciousness of his purpose and do the same for those watching. Brought up in a creative household, with his mother an artist and his father a photographer, Raza had high exposure to the arts from a young age. When he was eleven, he decided to commit to following the path towards becoming a filmmaker, first making videos with his friends, and then progressing onto working on larger scale productions at fifteen years of age with his debut short film ‘Jamal’. Since then he has worked across the short-form medium, writing and directing fiction and non-fiction projects, with his work screening at festivals around the world. He is currently developing his debut feature-length film.

Raza selected the topic of Identity Crisis for his residency. As someone who has experience of the subject, Raza was very keen to show this through an experimental music video for a series of pieces of music composed by a friend of his, chronicling the emotional journey, Raza went on through the lockdown, split into 7 acts (seven being a significant number in Islam): Emptiness, Rage, Directionlessness, Direction, Purpose, Love, Loss and Growth, and Sakinah. Sakinah is an Arabic word for the tranquillity placed in one’s heart by God when one finds true understanding in their purpose, and I feel as though that was the final evolution of all of those preceding emotions.

Get to know Raza’s work better by checking out his website