Lakna Edirisinghe, Carina Samuels and Eva Thomas have been announced as the latest participants for the third and final year of the CBC BIPOC TV & Film Showrunner Catalyst program.

The program aims to elevate and empower senior writers who identify as Indigenous, Black or people of colour to showrunner status. The latest edition of the program, a collaboration between CBC, BIPOC Film and TV and the Canadian Film Centre, began late last fall and is underway until fall 2025. The program was first unveiled in June 2022 at the Banff World Media Festival.

Ederisinghe (pictured right) is a Sri-Lankan-Canadian, Windsor, Ont.-born writer now based in Toronto. Her latest work is as a writer and co-executive producer on season two of Crave’s Late Bloomer.

Toronto-based Samuels (pictured left) has co-produced and story-edited on the second seasons of CTV’s Sullivan’s Crossing and CBC’s Wild Cards, and spent three seasons in the writers’ room of CBC’s Pretty Hard Cases.

Writer, director and producer Thomas (pictured centre) is currently in post production on her solo feature debut, Nika & Madison, an adaptation of her 2023 short Redlights.

The first half of the year-long program itinerary allowed each participant to work with an experienced showrunner on a Canadian-produced series. Participants were also paired externally with a different showrunner to act as mentor. The second half features a series of masterclasses on showrunning including anti-oppressive leadership, people management and budget considerations as well as building relationships with networks, studios, department heads and crew.

“In designing this program, we asked ourselves, what could we do in three years that would have real, tangible results in mid-career writers’ careers and push the needle in transforming the industry?” said Nathalie Younglai, BIPOC Film and TV founder, in a statement. “The biggest barrier is no longer breaking into entry-level positions, but moving from mid-level to leadership positions and recognizing that BIPOC creatives are skilled, trained and ready.”

Previous participants include Vance Banzo, Andrew Burrows-Trotman, Nelu Handa, Ian Iqbal Rashid, Amanda Joy, JP Larocque, Robina Lord-Stafford and Shannon Masters.

At this time, there is not another similar program in the works, but the organizations are open to working together again in the future, a CBC spokesperson told Playback Daily.

Images courtesy of CBC