Karen Knox’s We Forgot to Break Up (pictured) and Melanie Oates’s Sweet Angel Baby lead the film nominees for the 2024 Directors Guild of Canada (DGC) Awards.

Both We Forgot to Break Up (Motel Pictures) and Sweet Angel Baby (Relatable Films) picked up three nominations apiece for the annual awards, which will be presented on Oct. 28.

We Forgot to Break Up is one of five films nominated for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in a Feature Film. The film is also up for production design for a limited budget and picture editing.

Additional nominees for directorial achievement are Fawzia Mirza’s The Queen of My Dreams (Shut Up & Colour Pictures, BabyDaal Productions), which is also up for production design for limited budget; Jeff Chan’s Code 8 Part II (Collective Pictures), also nominated for picture editing; J Stevens’ Really Happy Someday; and Karen Chapman’s Village Keeper.

Oates is nominated for the Jean-Marc Vallée DGC Discovery Award for Sweet Angel Baby, and the film is also nominated for production design for a limited budget and sound editing.

The other directors nominated for the discovery award are Kaniehtiio Horn for Seeds (Carpe Dee Yum Productions, New Real Films); Matthew Rankin for Universal Language (Metafilms); Marie-Hélène Viens and Philippe Lupien for You Are Not Alone (La Boîte à Fanny); and Yuqi Kang for 7 Beats Per Minute (Intuitive Pictures, National Film Board of Canada [NFB]).

The directors nominated for the Allan King Award for Excellence in Documentary include Chelsea McMullan for Swan Song (Visitor Media); Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee for Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story (Banger Films, NFB), which is also nominated for picture editing for a doc; and Omar Majeed and Peter Mishara for Disco’s Revenge (Elevation Pictures), also up for picture editing.

Rounding out the nominees in the category are Aeyliya Husain for An Unfinished Journey (HitPlay Productions, Les Films d’Ici); Shannon Walsh for Adrianne & the Castle (Intuitive Pictures); and Adrian Wills for A Quiet Girl (NFB).

The nominees for Best Short Film are Alyson Richards for I Was Here; Phillip Barker for EarthWorm; Richard Rotter for Bloodline; Shubham Chhabra for Cash Cows; and Liz Whitmere for Cold.

The TV nominees for the DGC Awards were announced earlier this month.

The full list of nominees is available on the DGC website.

Image courtesy of Motel Pictures