More than 200 film and television professionals gathered at a Toronto hotel on Wednesday to honor seven women in the industry, including filmmaker Deepa Mehta and Academy Award-winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker, as part of Women in Film and Television’s international achievement awards.

Mehta was presented with the prize for excellence in film direction by Telefilm Canada executive director Wayne Clarkson, while Schoonmaker received the film editing award for her work on movies including Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull, The Aviator and The Departed.

‘While editing is about having an artistic gift, it’s also about hard work and patience and having a certain sensitivity to actors that I think is particularly feminine,’ Schoonmaker said upon receiving her award.

Newly minted National Film Board boss Tom Perlmutter presented the award for excellence in animation to the producer-director duo of Marcy Page and Torill Kove, who ‘manage to spin profound, moving experiences of normal domestic situations,’ he told the crowd. Page and Kove earlier this year garnered an Oscar for their short film The Danish Poet.

Other recipients included Zarqa Nawaz and Mary Darling, creator and exec producer, respectively, of Little Mosque on the Prairie, and former Toronto International Film Festival executive director Helga Stephenson.

The WIFT international achievement awards formed part of the organization’s international summit, which was hosted this week for the first time by its Toronto chapter. The summit was expected to draw 600 delegates from around the world, including New Zealand, Sweden and Afghanistan. The four-day conference ends Thursday.