Safai began her creative career as a musician and theatre performer in Vancouver[2] before turning to filmmaking. In 2020, she founded The Harlequin Theatre Society, through which she developed shorts, features, and experimental projects.
Her early work included music videos and short films created as incubators for young and emerging artists. In 2025 she completed her first feature, Foreigner, written in a single day as a personal diary piece and later produced with support from Telefilm’s Talent to Watch program. The film follows Yasamin Karimi, a teenage Iranian immigrant in early 2000s Canada who unleashes a demon after dyeing her hair blonde.
Style and themes
Safai’s films combine playful aesthetics (particularly Y2K culture) and nostalgia with psychological horror and social commentary. Her work often centres on identity, assimilation, and the cost of belonging, using horror as a metaphorical lens. She describes her style as “bubblegum horror”: candy-coated visuals concealing darker undercurrents.[3]
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