Today we’d like to introduce you to Wahid Reza. They and their team shared their story with us below:
Wahid Ibn Reza is an engineer turned award-winning filmmaker from Bangladesh-Canada currently living in Los Angeles, USA. He has thoroughly disappointed his parents by leaving the engineering field and pursuing a career as a screenwriter and actor. Before moving out of the country, he wrote over 100 episodes of television and several tv films and starred in numerous television series and films.
Since his graduation from the University of British Columbia, BFA in Film Production program, Wahid has been working in vfx/animation production for almost ten years, with credits on Emmy-winning shows such as Rick and Morty and Oscar-nominated shows such as Spider-Man: No Way Home. In the last decade, Wahid has been part of some of the biggest productions in tv and film. As per IMDb Pro, the projects he has been a part of had 8.88B in the box office worldwide.
Wahid has also been continuously creating content on the side. He has a passion for writing in fantasy, comedy, action, and sci-fi genres. In North America, Wahid worked in short films in various capacities as Executive Producer, Producer, Co-producer, Writer, and Director. His films Got screened at festivals such as Edmonton Film Festival, Montreal World Film Festival, Whistler Film Festival, Toronto’s Inside Out LGBT Film Festival, Vancouver Queer Film Festival, International Student Film Festival Pisek in Czech Republic, LA Diversity Film Festival, Surrey International Film Festival, Golden Egg Film Festival in LA, and Student Art Festival in Florida.
He was the winner of the Best Student Film award at FFM-Montreal 2015 and Edmonton Film Festival 2015 for the short film Terrorist as the Producer. He was the winner of the Best of Festival Award in overall Student Production at SIFF 2014 for short, “What am I doing Here?”. Wahid’s pitch-contest-winning animated short film The Paranoid Cat got screened at the Cinequest Film Festival in 2016 in San Jose. His animated short Surviving 71 is currently in production. He is also a Writer-Director for the Oscar-winning organization, National Film Board of Canada (NFB), working on an animated short about the climate crisis.
Wahid has been a quarterfinalist at Scriptapalooza (2018), ScreenCraft Animation Competition (2022), Emerging Screenwriters – Animation (2023), Filmmatic – Inroads Fellowship Season 6 (2023), a semifinalist at Script2Comic (2022), Los Angeles International Screenplay Awards -Diversity Initiative II (2022) and a finalist at NYC Midnight Screenwriting Challenge (2020). His original pilot was on the Red List in Coverfly for the Month of February-March 2023. Wahid can constantly incept ideas, create detailed worlds, and produce engaging dialogues. He has worked as a freelance writer for companies such as Yellow Animation, Ferlyco, TVO Kids, Wondery, Epic Story Media, Outfit 7, Bidaya Media, and Omens Studios.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Many obstacles for sure! I can mention a couple.
1st to convince my parents that I should leave engineering to do this. I’m an only child of a South Asian parent, so you can imagine their thrill.
2ndly it was a bit challenging to get yourself heard in North America, especially since you look and sound a bit different.
I basically put my head down and powered through. I made sure I worked harder than anybody, and then you are bound to get noticed.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I work in vfx/animation production. In that role, you manage a team of artists and make sure you hit the deliveries on time. It’s my responsibility to prepare the schedule and make sure we are sticking to it so the productions hit the screen on time. It can be a stressful job but it has its rewards. When you see your work on the big screen, you couldn’t be more proud of it. I’ve developed quite a reputation for working on some of the big projects in the last decade. And that has led my employer Annapurna Pictures to sponsor me to move to LA. I am currently on under O-1 visa which states I’m an alien with extraordinary abilities. I jokingly say that I always wanted to be an alien. But honestly, it feels good that you are recognized for the hours you have put in over the years as extraordinary abilities.
My second role is Writer-Director. I’m now working on an animated short film called “The Last Glacier.” The film is being produced by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). NFB has been nominated for Oscar 75 times and has won 12 times! Alumni from NFB include filmmakers such as Denis Villeneuve (Dune, Arrival) and Torill Kove (Oscar winner for Best Animated Short, The Danish Poet). To be considered to Write-Direct for such a prestigious organization is a privilege.
I think what sets me aside is my relentlessness. I don’t give up. Or I should say, I give up every night but start a new game every morning, like wordle!
What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
The big shift would be A.I. Pretty soon, most of the production jobs will be taken over by A.I. automation. I don’t think the creative roles will be threatened quite yet. But I’m planning for my retirement already. 🙂
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.directors.ca/directors/wahid-ibn-reza
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wreza/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wahid.i.reza/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wahid-ibn-reza-34522a15/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Bapzz
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/wirfilms
- Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4485867/
Image Credits
The first photo was taken by the photographer Muhammad Khaled Sarker. He worked for the biggest daily newspaper in Bangladesh back in 2020. I have since used this photo in various articles with his permission. The other photos were all taken on my phone. These are all on my IMDb, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4485867/.
