synopsis

Mascot is a surreal, noir-inflected satire about conditional belonging in the modern West.

At a prestigious university, two young SWANA (Southwest Asian, North African) outsiders enter institutions that promise opportunity and inclusion.

A politically outspoken Iranian Poli-Sci student is invited to a frat party after impressing classmates with his critiques of religious extremism. Flattered by the attention, he steps into a world of effortless Western freedom: beer, music, flirtation, debate. But when the conversation turns to questioning Western intervention and Empire, the mood shifts. What began as curiosity slowly transforms into suspicion. The party morphs into a paranoid labyrinth of surveillance and fear, and the man who was once welcomed as an interesting outsider becomes something far more dangerous: uncontrollable.

Across campus, a hungry emerging actress lands a lead role in a film production exploring oppression and resistance. Praised for her authenticity and identity, she is celebrated as the perfect embodiment of the story the institution wants to tell: A liberated “feminist” rescue. But as rehearsals unfold, the performance becomes increasingly scripted. Symbolic gestures replacing genuine expression. Her vulnerability becomes content, her identity becomes branding, and eventually her likeness is captured, replicated, and replaced.

Though the two characters move through very different worlds; one securitized, the other celebrated, they are shaped by the same invisible machinery.

Both discover that the systems welcoming them were never interested in their freedom.

They were interested in their performance.

In the end, both walk away.

And in a quiet final moment, the two meet—not as symbols or roles, but as people, choosing community over spectacle and autonomy over acceptance.

about the showrunner

Maziar Ghaderi is an award-winning director, writer, producer, multimedia artist, and educator that works in film, multimedia and interactive technology currently residing in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. With a background in media production, Maziar strives to articulate his social commentary through metaphors, epiphanies and critiques that speak to the zeitgeist of our times.

Maziar Ghaderi — Director

Maziar Ghaderi is a Toronto-based filmmaker, multimedia artist, and creative technologist whose work explores identity, power, and perception through immersive storytelling and visual experimentation. Working at the intersection of cinema, installation, and emerging media, his practice blends narrative with projection mapping, real-time systems, and spatial design to create experiences that are both intimate and architecturally expansive.

His projects have been presented at international festivals and institutions including TIFF, Nuit Blanche Toronto, and the MIT Media Lab, and his work has screened globally in cities such as Tokyo, Vancouver, and London. Across film and installation, Ghaderi is drawn to stories that interrogate systems of control, cultural memory, and the tension between the individual and the collective.

With Mascot, he moves further into narrative filmmaking while maintaining a distinct visual language shaped by satire, allegory, and technological experimentation. The project reflects his ongoing interest in how bodies, identities, and stories are framed, performed, and contested within contemporary culture.