Bashar Shbib

Bashar Shbib (born 1959) is a Canadian director and producer of independent films. Born in Damascus to a Syrian father and a German mother, he moved to Canada as a child with his parents and two brothers. He studied Microbiology at McGill University and later earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in film directing at Concordia University.

He began making films in Montreal in the 1980s, with short works such as Or d'Ur and Betsy, and less commercial features such as Evixion (1986) and Clair obscur (1988). He became one of Canada's most prolific independent filmmakers, with more than thirty films to his name. In the early 1990s he moved to Los Angeles, where he made his most successful films, romantic comedies such as Julia Has Two Lovers (1990), starring David Duchovny, and Lana in Love (1991). Both premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival's Panorama section and the Montreal World Film Festival. Ride Me (1992) and Draghoula (1994) followed.

In 2013 he released the documentary The Search for Evangeline, about his unsuccessful attempts to track down a copy of the historically important 1914 film Evangeline. His work has aired on television networks in several countries, though its legacy remains modest and its circulation limited.