Production designer Patrice Vermette and director-producer Ben Proudfoot represented Canada onstage at the Oscars, with each winning trophies that were presented before the broadcast and edited into the show.

Montreal’s Vermette (pictured left) took the award for Best Production Design on Quebec filmmaker Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic Dune (Warner Bros., Legendary Entertainment, Villeneuve Films), an honour he shared with set decorator Zsuzsanna Sipos (pictured middle). It was his third Oscar nomination, after a nod for work on Villeneuve’s Arrival in 2017 and for Jean-Marc Vallée’s The Young Victoria in 2010.

Proudfoot (pictured right), who hails from Halifax, won Best Documentary Short during the 94 Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday (March 27) for The Queen of Basketball, produced under his L.A. banner Breakwater Studios. It was his second consecutive time vying for the Oscar in that category after last year’s nomination for the documentary short A Concerto Is a Conversation.

Speaking to reporters backstage after his win, Vermette paid tribute to Vallée, who died in his cabin outside Quebec City on Dec. 25 at age 58.

“I would say, ‘Jean-Marc, thank you because you believed in me very early on in my career. In 1995, we started working together. And I miss you every day,'” said Vermette. “‘God, I wish you would be here today to see this, because we’re best buddies. So, Jean-Marc, this is for you.'”

Dune, on which Villeneuve was director, co-writer and a producer, won six Oscars in total. Its other wins were for sound, visual effects, original score, film editing and cinematography.

Vermette noted Canada’s film community is rich in creativity, having been “trained to work with very little, work on shoestring budgets.”

“When we get the chance and with the privilege to work on such a big production, I think it pays off,” he said.

Proudfoot, who also directed The Queen of Basketball, told reporters backstage that the win was a testament to the pioneering legacy of protagonist Lucy Harris, who scored the first basket in women’s Olympic history and was the first and only woman officially drafted into the NBA.

“I think this win shows not only that Lucy Harris, her story means something profound to America and to the world,” said Proudfoot. “And … any naysayer who says female athletes don’t deserve the world stage, I hope this helps contribute to changing that and ending this disparity and closing the gap in terms of compensation, in terms of exposure, that the female athletes get in comparison to men.”

Proudfoot noted he’s committed to short documentaries, which he feels is “the most democratic form of cinema.”

“It has the lowest barrier of entry to finance and make,” he said. “It has the lowest barrier of entry to the audience to see it. And I hope that short documentaries can become more and more visible.”

Both Vermette and Proudfoot were presented with the golden statuette in a ceremony before the live show on ABC and CTV. Their wins were edited and woven into the broadcast, but the decision by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to not have all the categories shown in the main show in their entirety had many in the film community upset.

Proudfoot told reporters that he will continue to voice his concerns on behalf of the short documentary category, “that there’s no perceived difference in importance. There’s nothing less or small just because it’s short, and I think Lucy Harris’s family would agree.”

Photo on the left: (L-R) Patrice Vermette and Zsuzsanna Sipos, winners of the Production Design Award for Dune, pose in the press room during the 94th Annual Academy Awards at Hollywood and Highland on March 27, 2022 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images)

Photo on the right: Ben Proudfoot, winner of the Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject for The Queen of Basketball, poses in the press room at the 94th Annual Academy Awards at Hollywood and Highland on March 27, 2022 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by David Livingston/Getty Images )