Toronto’s Deborah Chow honoured by DGC, St. John’s International Film Festival

The Mandalorian and Obi-Wan Kenobi director Deborah Chow has received the DGC Visionary Award at the St. John’s International Film Festival. The award honours a director’s body of work and includes a $2,000 “pay-it-forward prize” to an emerging filmmaker of the director’s choosing. Chow, a Toronto-based director whose credits include American Gods, The Man in the High Castle, Better Call Saul and Reign, selected actor and director Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers for the honour. Tailfeathers’ documentary Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy premiered at Hot Docs and recently screened at imagineNATIVE.

Last of the Right Whales takes prize at Planet in Focus

The soon to be released Canadian wildlife documentary Last of the Right Whales wins Best Canadian Feature at the Planet In Focus Film Festival, Canada’s largest Environmental Film Festival.

The film recently acquired by non-fiction production and distribution company Off the Fence, the team behind the Oscar-winning documentary feature My Octopus Teacher, is directed by Nadine Pequeneza, and covers the fight to save the North Atlantic right whale. Produced by HitPlay Productions, the film is set to be released in theatres this fall. Canada’s public broadcaster CBC plans to air the documentary in 2022.

The story centres on a unique group – a wildlife photographer, a marine biologist, a whale rescuer, and a crab fisherman – who come together with the goal to save the less than 400 remaining right whale. The film combines the use of 4K cinematography of a blue-chip nature film with the character-driven, vérité storytelling of a high-stakes drama. Making the most of the unprecedented access to film the migration of the right whale from their calving ground off the coast of Florida to their new feeding area in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the feature documentary brings a message of hope about the most at-risk, great whale population on the planet.

Second cohort named for New Works Grant

Indie prodco Experimental Forest Films, in support of TELUS Storyhive, has named the second recipients of its New Work Grant. Adhel Arop, Kemi Craig, Mariam Ingrid Barry and Sophia Turunesh Mufuruki will all receive $2,000 in grants for their respective projects. Arop’s documentary Katiba Banat: The First Girls looks at the lives of female child soldiers in the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army; Craig’s One of an Infinite is an Afro-surrealist dance film; Ingrid Barry’s Tiana is a short film about a young Black girl seeking reproductive justice; and Turunesh Mufuruki’s short Coco Marijuana explores and decolonizes spirituality and ancient traditions in Africa.

The grant given to “Black filmmakers living on the unceded lands known as British Columbia” to support their work, with eligible projects ranging from scripted and unscripted short or feature-length films, as well as experimental and animation projects. The money is meant to support the artists and can be used in any way they choose. The artists were chosen by a jury, which included filmmaker Alicia K. Harris and grant alumni Nifemi Madarikan and Sideah Alladice.

WIDC partners with film fests for latest career advancement cohort

Women in the Director’s Chair (WIDC) has named eight participants for its fall 2021 Career Advancement Module (CAM), presented in collaboration with St John’s International Women’s Film Festival and with Reelworld Film Festival. Three directors were selected to develop scripted series – Dani Pagliarello (The Drop), Bronwyn Szabo (Mardöll) and Polly Pierce (Wytch Craft). Five directors were picked to develop film scripts – Luvia Petersen (H.appiness), Nika Belianina, Lorraine Price (Engraved on the Nation), Eva Thomas and Dianne Wulf Mahoney.

Notably, 50% of the cohort are from underrepresented racial communities, with participants based in B.C. Alberta, Ontario and Quebec. Online workshop sessions designed to build a strategic career plan will run through this month and participants will receive passes to festivals online offers and follow-up career coaching will continue through March 2022. The cohort for Story & Leadership will be announced at the end of October along with the winner of the 2021 WIDC Feature Film Award.

The mentor directors for this cohort are award-winning filmmakers Mina Shum (Meditation Park), honoured with this year’s Reelworld Award of Excellence, and WIDC alumna Sharon Lewis (Brown Girl Begins) whose latest feature With Wonder is screening at Reelworld Film Festival.

– with files from Zeenya Shah and Kelly Townsend