About
Defar Media was imagined by creative director Lu Asfaha, who believes that Black women are hungry for fantasy and horror stories that reflect themselves. 'Defar' is Tigrinya, the main language spoken in Eritrea. It means audacious, fearless, and insolent. All the makings of a rebel. Likewise, our stories centre unique women cutting new paths for themselves, reflecting our lived experiences. We hope to be able to nurture rebellious women, and bring their stories to you. Defar Media focuses on the strange, and embraces it. We know that's where the best stories live.
Lu, herself, is an award-winning writer and director telling stories that externalize the internal. She is an alum of the Canadian Film Centre’s 2022 Norman Jewison Film Program Director’s Lab where she wrote and directed the short body horror Sight, which premiered at Fantasia International Film Festival in 2023. In 2022, her short horror film Fresh Meat premiered at Inside Out Film Festival, as well as screening at historic Black film festivals Pan African Film Fest and BronzeLens. Fresh Meat also won Best Canadian Short at RPFF, was broadcast nationally on CBC’s Canadian Reflections, and opened for Boots Riley’s Sorry To Bother You at the Toronto Outdoor Picture Show in 2024. Lu was BlueCat’s 2022 Feature Winner and took home their Fellini Award for best international script for her upcoming feature horror film They Echo. And in addition to that, Lu directed 3 episodes of the East African-Canadian comedy series virgins!, as well as serving as a story editor on the series which was released on CBC Gem. Her first thriller-of-the-week, My Husband’s Baby, premiered on Tubi in 2024.
Getting her start in documentary, she has worked as a camera operator and editor on several award-winning documentaries, including Mr. Jane and Finch, Subjects of Desire and Being Black in Toronto. In 2017 she directed the short documentary Freedom Summer, which was later released on CBC Gem, as well as screening at festivals and educational programs across the world. In 2019, she was a Doc Accelerator Fellow at Hot Docs Film Festival and won the RBC Emerging Director Award at Regent Park Film Festival. In 2021 she edited 2 episodes of the Critics Choice-nominated documentary series Shine True and won BIPOCTV’s inaugural Reel Work award. Since working in documentary, she has pivoted into scripted genre, most recently receiving Telefilm production financing for the low-budget horror feature They Echo.
Our passion for filmmaking comes from a desire to tell stories that reflect the experiences of our communities, in unique and engaging ways. This passion has encouraged us to actively implement inclusion in our work, seeking out QTBIPOC collaborators. The production crew of our dark fantasy short Paladin was made up entirely of women of colour, and our horror short Fresh Meat was helmed entirely by queer Black women. It’s important to us that the people behind the camera reflect the vision in front of it