Toronto, Canada
Jim Libiran moves to Canada to pursue filmmaking and art education
The Toronto Arts Foundation presented the Toronto Newcomer Artist Award to Filipino filmmaker and writer Jim Libiran. The Newcomer Artist Award recognizes immigrant and refugee artists who are building their creative careers in Canada.
Libiran is an internationally awarded filmmaker and writer whose practice fuses cinema and social realism. His debut feature Tribu (Tribe) cast real gang members from Manila’s urban slums. His second feature film, Happyland, is based on true events that took place in Tondo in the 1980s, when Spanish priests from the Don Bosco parish and youth center began teaching football to local out-of-school youth.
Libiran moved to Canada in the fall of 2024. Focused on pursuing filmmaking and art education in Canada, he started exploring new connections. In less than a year, Libiran’s first non-fiction story in the English language, “Death on the Seventh,” was longlisted on the 2025 CBC Nonfiction Prize. Libiran also mentored emerging writers and filmmakers in Toronto. He then co-founded Kapwa Cultural Initiatives serving as its Director for Film, Media Arts, Literature and Arts Education.
“Migration can make you invisible for a while. You arrive with years of work behind you, but you still have to rebuild your place, your network, and your voice in a new cultural landscape,” Libiran said in a press release.
The Toronto Arts Foundation Awards are presented to artists, cultural leaders and businesses in recognition of artistic excellence, cultural leadership and contribution to the arts.
Reflecting on being an artist in a new country, Libiran says, “As a newcomer artist in Toronto, this recognition means a great deal because it tells me that starting over does not mean starting from zero.”
“What I appreciate about this recognition is that it understands that reality. It sees both the difficulty and the possibility. For me, it is an affirmation that the work I’ve done before still matters, and that there is room to keep growing, contributing, and building meaningful connections here in Toronto,” he adds.
Commenting on the Toronto Arts Foundation program he participated in, Libiran says, “As a newcomer artist, what you need is not just praise, but pathways: training, mentorship, professional networks, and paid opportunities to keep building your practice. That is what programs like ArtWorksTO offer.”
“For me, that support has been very meaningful because it helped me connect my past experience to my new life in Toronto. It made the process of starting over feel less like erasure and more like renewal,” he adds.
The Toronto Arts Council highlighted that “the City of Toronto recently launched Culture Connects: An Action Plan for Culture in Toronto (2025-2035). This 10-year plan aims to invest an additional $35 million in the arts and culture in Toronto. Such forward-thinking investments will ensure that the arts remain a powerful connector, bringing residents, newcomers, and tourists together to foster community, belonging, and economic growth.”
“I want to build projects where art can listen as deeply as it speaks,” Libiran says. “My next goal is to build a sustainable Toronto-based practice that brings together filmmaking, community arts, and public storytelling,” he adds.
Speaking about how his goal can materialize, “through Kapwa Cultural Initiatives, an arts-based non-profit we have established, I hope to grow projects that will promote and teach more cultural deepening courses for first and second generation Filipinos,” Libiran explains.
He adds, “I am also putting together multimedia projects that will surface the stories of Filipino lives in diaspora as well as foster greater dialogue amongst Filipinos and within the greater diasporic circles. These are examples of programs which combine art, community memory, and social reflection.”
Libiran expounded on the role of artists as community builders. “The deeper objective is this: to create work that enlarges the public imagination, especially around migrants, racialized communities, and Filipinos whose stories deserve not just sympathy, but space, depth, and lasting cultural presence. To build a home for stories that have carried too much for too long in silence.”
The Toronto Arts Awards season Kick-Off Party took place on April 14, 2026, where the Newcomer Artist Award recipients were celebrated.
The Mayor’s Arts Lunch on April 28, 2026, hosted by Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, brought together artists, cultural leaders, and city builders to honour Toronto Arts Award recipients and finalists.