Shreya Patel just became MISAFF’s 2026 Rising Star as Mississauga’s South Asian film week opens
Sarnia-raised, Toronto-based actor-director Shreya Patel is MISAFF’s 2026 Rising Star. She hosts a symposium chat with Transplant lead Hamza Haq on October 1 as the Mississauga festival runs through October 4.
Mina Park
Shreya Patel grew up in Sarnia looking out a bedroom window and inventing a life in film. Today Mississauga’s Mosaic International South Asian Film Festival named her its 2026 Rising Star.
The festival opened this afternoon and runs through October 4 at Cineplex Square One and the Living Arts Centre. Patel, now based between Toronto and Mumbai, gets the week’s Canadian talent spotlight. Tomorrow at 3 p.m. she hosts a MISAFF Chat with Hamza Haq, the Transplant lead who held the same honor in 2019.
That is a nice full-circle booking. Haq already proved Canadian network TV can carry a South Asian lead for multiple seasons. Patel is still building the version of the industry where she does not wait to be cast.
Actor and producer in the same week
If you know her from acting, start with Strangers in a Room. Andre Rehal’s feature gave her Alisha, and the film won Audience Choice at Reelworld. She also led Francis Luta’s short Vivid, about a young woman navigating mental illness. Second City Conservatory training in Toronto keeps her sharp for comedy, which matters for the series she wants next.
The bigger bet is Window Dreams Productions, the company she founded in 2015 and now co-runs with writer-producer Rabiya Mansoor. The name is literal: Sarnia windows, big plans, then actual paperwork.
Girl Up, her documentary on domestic human trafficking in Canada, partnered with TIFF for the CivicAction Summit. That early project still explains her taste. She likes stories people would rather skip at dinner, then finds a room where the story has to stay.
She produced Nedda Sarshar’s short Unibrow, which collected Oscar-qualifying and Canadian Screen Award-qualifying festival wins. During lockdown she pulled together Unity, a remote documentary with participants from dozens of countries, and co-directed the Faynyx music video Freedom Dance, which crossed 1.2 million YouTube views with Jim Sarbh and Bani J among the faces.
The series she still wants to land is Layla Is Relevant, a Sarnia-set comedy she co-writes and stars in as a former child star trying to reboot her career from her mom’s house. Window Dreams made Telefilm’s Canadian Producers to Watch list at Series Mania in 2024. A Rising Star week helps if the slate is already real.
What to do with the honor
MISAFF is twelve this year: sixteen features, thirty shorts, and a Canadian Media Fund symposium on October 1. Opening night put Sarmad Khoosat’s Lali on the Cineplex screen. Past Rising Stars include Parveen Kaur of Manifest and Rakhee Morzaria of Run the Burbs. The festival likes talent who already have a show people can name.
Tomorrow Patel puts Haq in front of an industry room to talk about how Canadian casting actually moves. He has three Canadian Screen Awards for Transplant, plus film work in The Queen of My Dreams and My Salinger Year. She sits opposite that ladder while still pitching her own next rung.
Forbes 30 Under 30 and Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women already appear on every bio. What matters this week is the room. Funders, programmers, and diaspora audiences are in Mississauga at the same time she is.
Our take: if you are in the GTA, go to the Haq chat tomorrow. Then watch whether Layla Is Relevant or the next Window Dreams short turns the Rising Star week into a production step. Patel’s story is a small-city kid who stopped waiting for someone else’s call sheet and made a Toronto-Mumbai company festivals now have to introduce by name.
