K im Albright’s in-development feature debut With Love and a Major Organ has won a pair of Women In the Director’s Chair (WIDC) prizes: the CBC Films WIDC Talent Development Award and the WIDC Feature Film Award.

The latter includes in-kind production and post-production services and rentals valued at up to $200,000 from companies including William F. White International.

Meanwhile, the CBC Films WIDC Talent Development Award, which supports underrepresented storytellers, brings with it a $10,000 cash prize. In addition, Albright will receive funds to assist with script polish and packaging, and a director’s chair bursary that will allow her to participate in the WIDC Story & Leadership program.

With the award wins, Albright said “production is now truly within reach” on her directorial debut. The B.C.-based filmmaker will now complete the final stages of script development on the project, which is adapted from Julia Lederer’s stage play of the same name.

Albright and Lederer began developing the screenplay in 2018 while Albright was taking part in a CFC residency. The pair further developed the project through the 2019 Whistler Film Festival Writers Lab, with the project also receiving funding from Harold Greenberg Fund and Telefilm.

The film, which is set in a “technologically advanced but antiseptic world where people go to extreme lengths to avoid the messiness of their emotions,” is a cautionary tale about a woman in her 30s who is determined to follow her overactive heart.

It is being produced by Madeleine Davis. Executive producers are Lori Lozinski (The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open) and WIDC’s Carol Whiteman, the latter of whom has executive produced eight of the 10 features supported through the WIDC Feature Film Award since it was launched in 2009.