Through the Twin Cities Arab Film Festival, Mizna brings the best current, independent Arab cinema to Minnesota. The festival engages the Arab community, presenting a curated program that projects on screen reflections of the Arab experience that are authentic, nuanced, and beautiful. For the larger audience, the festival provides the chance to encounter Arab / Arab American communities on their own terms, revealing the heterogeneity of Arab peoples, and providing a rich, complex, and true source of cultural understanding. Films in the festival are, for the most part, not in wide distribution, and are therefore otherwise unavailable to Twin Cities audiences.

The festival seeks to provide Arab American and Arab film artists support and exposure, build the local Arab American community, and present to the general public the diverse ways in which Arabs view themselves and the world they live in through the powerful and accessible medium of film.

Mizna is an arts organization devoted to providing a forum for Arab and Arab American film, literature, and art. In addition to the film festival, Mizna also publishes the only journal of Arab American literature in the U.S. (Mizna: Prose, Poetry, and Art Exploring Arab America) and presents other vital cultural programming in the Twin Cities.