Ziad Touma is an award-winning producer, director and writer, working in film, television and digital media, both in fiction and documentary, in English and in French. Ziad’s first feature film was nominated for three Canadian Genie Awards. In television, he was nominated by the Canadian Gemini Awards as Best Director for a documentary series and nominated by the Canadian Leo Awards for producing a Best Documentary Series.

Most recently, Ziad was the Associate Producer on Denis Villeneuve’s film Incendies, winner of TIFF’s Best Canadian Film, screened in Venice, Telluride and Pusan and selected as Canada’s entry to the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Through his production company Couzin Films, Ziad recently produced Adam’s Wall, a feature film directed by Michael Mackenzie, sold to HBO Europe and nominated at the Quebec Jutra Awards; Birthday Girl, a short film by Erin Laing, broadcast on CBC and TéléQuébec, that won the Run for your Shorts screenwriting award; and the feature documentary Profession Veejay for MusiMax music television station.

Through Couzin Films, Ziad also produced, directed and co-wrote Saved by the Belles, which won Best Feature Film at Toronto’s Inside Out Film Festival (2003) and was nominated for three Canadian Genie Awards (Best Achievement in Cinematography, Best Achievement in Art Direction and Best Achievement in Music – Original Song). Amongst its many adventures, the Belles’ journey introduced the innovative web site www.savedbythebelles.com, a coproduction between Couzin Films and BlueSponge that won the Boomerang Awards for Best Arts & Culture Website and was nominated as Best Entertainment Site at the SXSW Awards.

Ziad's last short film Line-up (1998), was awarded the Telefilm Canada Prize for Best Canadian Short Film at the Atlantic Film Festival and was chosen as one of the Ten Most Outstanding Shorts to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Sodec’s Jeunes Créateurs. A graduate of Concordia University’s Communication Studies Department in 1994, his student film, Dinner at Bubby’s (1995), a family comedy, won Best Canadian Student Film at the Montreal International Short film Festival and was nominated as Best Canadian Comedy at Yorkton’s Film Festival.

For television, Ziad executive produced and directed Paperny Films’ new series Dussault inc. for CityTv and the Biography Channel. His most recent television projects include showrunning (directing, producing and co-creating) the docu-soap series Chop Shop produced by Paperny Films for Slice and for which he was nominated for Best Documentary Series at the Leo Awards; the series writing and directing of Showcase’s hit docu-soap Webdreams (seasons 1 & 3) produced by Galafilm and for which he was nominated for a Gemini award as Best Director in a documentary series; writing and directing MusiMax’s docu-soap series On s’en va à Granby (2007); directing TVA’s weekly entertainment magazine Star Système for JPL productions (2005); directing Paperny Films’ Kink season 3 for Showcase; and directing the variety show Folles nuits (2002) produced by Amérimage-Spectra for Radio-Canada. His first job in television had him work as director and videographer for music television station MusiquePlus for 5 years, during which he traveled the world documenting pop culture.

Ziad was recently chosen as one of the two Canadian producers to participate in the highly reputable Ateliers du Cinéma Européen ACE-IPA2 program in Paris and Zurich, as well as their coproduction workshop in Kyoto and Tokyo: ACE-UNIJAPAN. A graduate of the Mediterranean Film Business School program in Spain and Montreal’s TVA/HEC program in Film and Television Management, Ziad also participated in Rotterdam Lab’s international co-production seminar held during Cinemart, NSI-Totally television program and Telefilm Canada’s Feature-It as well as Producers Without Borders at Berlin’s EFM.