Hawzah News Agency- A Peterborough filmmaker has made a five-minute documentary about how people rallied when the mosque was set ablaze. Matthew Hayes released his film, The Masjid, online.

 Filmmaker Matthew Hayes Hayes made a short film titled Masjid about the aftermath of the November 14, mosque arson hate crime that occurred in 2015.

Hayes, 29, is a filmmaker and also a husband, a father of two small children and a PhD student at Trent University in Canadian studies.

He said he's a self-taught filmmaker who took up the craft as he studied for his undergraduate and then his Master's degree in anthropology, also at Trent.

When someone set fire to Peterborough's only mosque in November, Hayes followed the story.

In only 30 hours after the fire, a crowdsourcing site raised more than $110,000 to help repair the burned building.

It was more money than the mosque needed - they had insurance to cover all repairs, save for a new security system.

It meant the association that runs the mosque had $80,000 left over, once the repairs were done.

It gave all that money to local charities for women and children: Five Counties Children's Centre and the YWCA Crossroads Shelter.

Hayes said he wanted to emphasize both the generous outpouring from the community and the way the mosque immediately paid it forward.

"That embodied the story and the values," Hayes said. "They could have kept that money but they didn't - which is amazing."

Meanwhile Hayes said he's now working on a much longer documentary on poverty in Peterborough.

It focuses on the warming room, a shelter for the homeless that operates only in winter.

Hayes expects that film to be as long as about 90 minutes.

He and producer John Hedderwick plan to work on it for at least another six months before shopping it around to film festivals such as ReFrame and Hot Docs.