Canadian LGBTQ film festival Inside Out and Vancouver-based LGBTQ+ network OUTtv have lifted the lid their inaugural recipients for the OUTspoken Documentary Film Financing Fund.

Launched this July, the financing fund – which is aimed at supporting documentaries from Canadian LGBTQ2 filmmakers – has tapped No Squad in the Wild from director Loveleen Kaur (pictured left) and The Archivist from Tricia Hagoriles (pictured right) as its first projects.

No Squad in the Wild follows Yasmine, a 27-year-old queer muslim woman of colour grappling between getting a nine-to-five job and her future in Toronto’s hip-hop scene. The project sees Breakthroughs Film Festival executive director Mariam Zaidi serve as a producer.

Meanwhile, Hagoriles’ The Archivist examines the life of artist, poet, writer, curator and archivist Sur Rodney (Sur), who helped shape the New York art scene in the early ’80s and his shift to focus on protecting the work of black gay artists during the advent of the AIDS crisis. Lindsay Blair Goeldner is a producer.

Prior to this, Hagoriles won Inside Out’s RBC Emerging Canadian Artist Award in 2015 for her short film Beat. Additionally, she was selected for the Reelworld Film Festival’s E20 program in 2017 and is one of five directors in the Canadian Film Centre’s 2019 Cineplex Film Program. Goeldner is also part of the program’s producer stream.

No Squad in the Wild and The Archivist will each receive $18,000 in production financing , as well as mentoring and production support from Inside Out and OUTtv. Additionally, once completed, the documentaries will screen on OUTtv and its SVOD platform OUTtvGo. All films submitted for the OUTspoken Documentary Film Financing Fund will also be considered for the Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film Festival.