Playback is proud to present the 2025 cohort for our annual 10 to Watch. We are publishing individual profiles on all 10 industry talents over September and October.

Amy Trefry’s life would make for an entertaining but seemingly implausible movie plot.

They grew up on a peregrine falcon breeding farm in Wainwright, Alta., with hippie parents dedicated to saving the endangered bird, and only found their way to filmmaking after earning a master’s degree in environmental sociology and acquiring a CV that includes stints as a volcano guide, cook, ESL teacher and yoga instructor.

As a result, Trefry digs into elements of their own life as inspiration for their television and film projects, often with a comical view.

After first making their mark as the writer and director of the award-winning OUTtv comedy series Good Grief, the queer, non-binary co-founder of Interwoven Films is now preparing to unveil their first feature film. Vermillion, a queer, character-driven “mumblecore” road-trip drama made in eight days for $60,000 in eight days, will make its world premiere at the Atlantic International Film Festival (AIFF) in Halifax on Sunday (Sept. 14) before heading to Cinema Diverse in Palm Springs.

“To be honest, I don’t think I ever really belonged in the sciences,” Trefry tells Playback Daily. “I’ve always loved writing and telling stories, and slowly through 30 years found my way into film.”

Going from farm to Hollywood is not a path most people know how to follow, so instead Trefry earned their master’s degree in environmental sociology, studying climate change, food security and HIV/AIDS in South Africa. Realizing academia was not for them, they spent the next 15 years as a yoga instructor and yoga instructor trainer, 12 of those years abroad.

“I Googled, ‘How to make a film?’ and because I happen to be good at research, I managed to figure out grants, pitching competitions [and] local film cooperatives. I was living in Halifax at the time, which is the most supportive community you can possibly find yourself in,” says Trefry, adding that they set a goal of applying for 50 things a year.

It paid off. The first door that opened was CBC’s comedy Mr. D, where they were cast in a “tiny” role and “popped up every once in a while” over couple of seasons. Then, when it came to filmmaking, they won a CBC pitch competition, associated with AIFF, for Jerky, a self-described “bizarre feminist poetic monster movie.”

After being selected for programs including the Canadian Film Centre Producers Lab, the TIFF Writers Lab and RDV Canada: Meet the Series, Trefry scored their first original series commission in 2022 with Good Grief for OUTtv.

Created by Trefry and the show’s co-lead, Katerina Bakolias, the series chronicles the unlikely friendship that develops between a queer sexagenarian and a decades-younger widow at a bereavement support group. The show returned for its second season in April of this year and has been greenlit for a third, with production slated to begin in March 2026.

In the meantime, Trefry is preparing for the premiere of Vermillion at AIFF this week, although they haven’t spoken with distributors about sales for the film yet. Instead, they’ll be taking part in EAVE’s 2025 marketing workshop, which will inform their post-festival strategy for the film.

Trefry is also moving forward on a growing development slate. They have received development money from the Canada Council for the Arts for Santuario, a full-length documentary about a group of Indigenous transgender women in Colombia who work on a coffee farm. Also in the pipeline is a comedic series called Soul Fire, inspired by Trefry’s days as a yoga instructor

Another project that echoes the filmmaker’s past experience is Operation Falcon, a based-on-true-events story that Trefry describes as “an espionage farce disguised as a wildlife rescue mission.”

The film is currently in development with the Bradley Cooper-founded company Lea Pictures, after Trefry met the prodco’s head of television Kristen Barnett at Content London.

“What really stood out about their perspective was so many of the stories that they’re interested in making, and have been able to execute, come from their real-life experience, [while] also [having] a professional separation between what makes sense on the screen and what makes sense about your personal story,” says Barnett. “Having the ‘come hell or high water’ attitude is how you end up being not only a producer, but someone that can survive in the industry.”

For their part, Trefry looks back to that 50-things-a-year pledge as foundational for both their career to date and going forward.

“[That goal] has meant that I push myself and I’m curious and stay curious as a filmmaker to see what is out there and what are other people doing,” they explain. “I meet way more people because of that, which is a huge part of why we’re all making film: to connect with somebody else and explore the human condition.”

Image courtesy of Amy Trefry