Kiana Rawji is a Canadian director, writer, and producer based in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College with a joint concentration in Film and History & Literature. As a South Asian Muslim and daughter of East African immigrants, Kiana resists binary categorizations, leaning into complexity while exploring stories of diaspora, identity, and human resilience. Her TEDx talks on Islam and the Cosmopolitan Ethic have reached over 150,000 people worldwide. Kiana's 2021 documentary, LONG DISTANCE, about migrant workers at an Albertan meat plant, won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Alberta Short Film at the 2021 Calgary International Film Festival. Her 2023 documentary, MAMA OF MANYATTA—which screened at the 2023 Pan African Film Festival, Essence Film Festival & Zanzibar International Film Festival, with a Special Jury Mention—follows a woman fighting HIV & gender-based-violence in a Kenyan slum. Her 2023 fiction film, INSIDE JOB, about an Indian woman and her African domestic workers in 1970s Nairobi, premiered at the 2023 Chicago South Asian Film Festival and screened alongside MAMA OF MANYATTA at the Aga Khan Museum (Toronto), Unseen Nairobi (Kenya), and Cardel Theatre (Calgary). 

Kiana is currently developing a couple projects, including a Kenyan migrant worker film (supported by the Canada Council for the Arts), and her first feature film, ADULT CHILDREN, centered on an intergenerational immigrant family (supported by The Harvardwood Artist Launch Fellowship). With the latter, Kiana won the 2025 Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles Pitch Competition, and will be participate in Stowe Story Labs' Narrative Lab.