Kashif Pasta

Kashif Pasta is an award-winning Pakistani-Malawian director and writer raised in Canada based in Los Angeles and Vancouver. Growing up on a wide range of British comedy, Bollywood musicals and American popcorn films, Kashif’s work is focused on optimistic, BIPOC-led, character-driven genre stories with a strong sense of wonder, heart, and fun. A finalist for the Pillars Fund x Riz Ahmed inaugural Muslim Artist Fellowship, Kashif's brand of grounded, heartfelt storytelling has resonated with audiences worldwide. His sci-fi drama short “Desi Standard Time Travel” has won over 16 awards on its ongoing festival run, including best short at Reel Asian Toronto and the audience award at the San Diego International Film Festival, and is currently in development as a feature at Telefilm. He most recently directed the Afghan-American heist comedy “Playmates” as the final episode of the groundbreaking anthology series “Ramadan America”, which won the excellence award at SeriesFest 2024. On television, Kashif has written in rooms for Paul Feig’s Powderkeg, WarnerMedia, and CBC. He was an ABC Comedy Lab fellow for his pilot "Long Distance", and served as director and showrunner for all five episodes of the hit TELUS series "Welcome to Surrey", a South Asian-led comedy earning over a million viewers and a number of best webseries awards around the world. As a producer, Kashif's work has spanned commercials, narrative, and music videos, including the SXSW Grand Jury Prize winning music video "Meet You at the Light". Outside of film and television, Kashif can be found obsessing over architecture, food anthropology, and live comedy.