Toronto filmmaker V.T. Nayani’s debut feature This Place, produced by Hometeam Films and Mutuals Pictures, has won the People’s Choice Award for Canadian Feature at the Vancouver Queer Film Festival (VQFF).

The prize comes with a $5,000 cash prize from the Canada Media Fund, with a total of $30,000 handed out to the festival’s People’s Choice winners.

Karimah Zakia Issa’s Scaring Women at Night (Fae Pictures) won for Canadian Short, with a $20,000 camera package from Panavision, while writer-director Lauren Marsden’s Tabanca won the Gerry Brunet Memorial Award: Best British Columbia Short. Marsden will receive $2,500 courtesy of the Directors Guild of Canada, B.C. District Council, plus a $15,000 camera package from Keslow Camera.

Meanwhile, U.S. director Sharon “Rocky” Roggio’s won the RBC Narrative Change Award for 1946: The Mistranslation that Shifted Culture, which comes with a $5,000 cash prize, as well as the People’s Choice Award for Best International Feature, which also includes a $2,500 cash prize from Out On Screen. Sining Xiang’s Foreign Uncle won for International Short, with a $2,500 cash prize from Out On Screen.

The awards were announced on Monday (Aug. 21).

Hot Docs selects fellows for Podcast Development Lab

Hot Docs has selected eight fellows for its Podcast Development Lab, a program that is part of the Hot Docs Podcast Festival, which will take place from Oct. 18 to 22.

The lab, presented in collaboration with Amazon Music Canada and Inspirit, is aimed at boosting emerging or sophomore Black, Indigenous or person of colour podcast creators in Canada who have a non-fiction project in early development.

The creators and projects selected for the lab include: Sadia Ali and Chloe Navaretnam (Clean As You Go), Clif Mark (You Deserve Nothing), Hussain Khan (25 NorthEast), Kailun Chen (Cosmopolitics), Karen-Luz Sison (The Baon Box), Yasaman Mansoori (Heart of Greed), Liz Singh (This is Your Brain on Drugs), and Sandro Silva and Tanara MacLean (Lost and Found – A Podcast About Fatherhood).

The selected fellows will get an insight into “story development, pitching, navigating the podcast sphere, and strategic marketing outreach,” according to a news release, and also engage with industry experts in the months-long private lab. Each participant will receive a $2,000 creator grant to boost the development of their work.

The lab will culminate with the festival’s Creators Forum, which brings together industry pros and emerging producers and takes place Oct. 19 to 20.

Toronto’s Hazelton Hotel gives unique honour to Norman Jewison

Famed Canadian director Norman Jewison has a new feather to add to his cap – Toronto’s Hazelton Hotel has named its new screening room the Norman Jewison Cinema. The 25-seat private screening room will debut on Sept. 11 during the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) with a private event. Montreal-born filmmaker Barry Avrich helped facilitate the naming, according to a news release.

Jewison is the Academy Award-nominated director of films such as Moonstruck and Fiddler on the Roof, and is the founder of the Canadian Film Centre. He has also recently been honoured by TIFF with the creation of the Norman Jewison Award for its annual TIFF Tribute Awards. The new award celebrates Canadians that have found global success, with Montreal-born producer and director Shawn Levy (Stranger Things) selected as the inaugural recipient.

With files from Kelly Townsend

Image courtesy of VQFF