Women in View has announced the three directors chosen for phase two of the 2xMore/Sinking Ship Director’s Lab.

Nimisha Mukerji, Heather Hawthorne-Doyle and Sherren Lee were selected for the program and will now shadow the director on three episodes of Sinking Ship Entertainment’s Dino Dana before directing an 11-minute episode of the series themselves.

The aim of the initiative is to double the number of female directors (from 17% to 35%) in scripted Canadian projects by 2018.

The second round, which was announced in June, saw applicants’ pitches and reels being reviewed by an expanded team of industry members, in addition to the Sinking Ship team. The review committee included Shaftesbury Films’ VP of creative Julie Lacey, Kids’ CBC’s executive in charge of production Marie McCann, filmmaker Norma Bailey and TVO’s director of kids TV Marney Malabar.

Mukerji is a former recipient of the DGC Ontario Director Mentorship and a participant in Bell Media’s National Fellowship program, while Hawthorne-Doyle is currently a director at Thunderbird TV and was formerly a supervising producer at Big Coat Productions. Lee is an alumnus of the CFC’s Cineplex Entertainment Film Program Directors’ Lab and has previously directed CFC short film Benjamin.

The second phase of the initiative runs from Aug. 15 to Sept. 2, with Dino Dana episodes directed by program winners set to air on TVO and Yoopa in 2017. Dino Dana also streams on Amazon Prime.

The participants in the previous round of the program were Lara Azzopardi, Zoe Roberts and Mars Horodyski, who is now directing three episodes in the new series of Dino Dana. Horodyski will also now be shadowed by participants in the second round of the competition.

2xMore/Sinking Ship Director’s Lab is a collaboration between Women in View and the Directors Guild of Canada, in partnership with CBC, Bell Media, the Canadian Media Production Association, Creative BC and Telefilm.