Vancouver’s Gender Equity in Media Society (GEMS) has announced the lineup for the 2024 The Genre Film Lab (formerly known as From Our Dark Side).

The program is designed to support the development of Canadian genre film creators – think thrillers, western, science fiction, fantasy and horror – whose projects are at an advanced stage of development.

The five films selected this year include projects from British Columbia and Ontario, namely Disco’s Not Dead (directed by Panta Mosleh and written by Toby Marks), Dormant (written and directed by Jenny Lee-Gilmore), آنجا در آغوشم بکش / Love Me There (written by Sara Caspian and co-directed by Caspian and Zehra Nawab), Terrible Thing (written and directed by Mily Mumford) and To The Sea (written and directed by Vanessa Magic).

This year’s jury was made up of Austin-based acquisitions manager, programmer, professor and producer, Logan Taylor; Canadian Screen Award-nominated director, writer and actor Mary Galloway (The Cowichan Sweater: Our Knitted Legacy); and Elizabeth Purchell, a Brooklyn-based queer film historian, programmer and filmmaker.

Leading the Genre Film Lab for the third year is filmmaker, performer, programmer and former programming director for the Frontières International Co-Production Market, Vanessa Meyer.

The Genre Film Lab has expanded in 2024 and will begin a month earlier (at the start of May), with two master classes on story development and pitching instructed by the award-winning producer and coach Helene Granqvist (former president of Women in Film and Television International).

Other sessions will include group development and pitch master classes, a film sales and distribution seminar, strategy sessions with genre industry experts (focusing on financing and packaging), one-on-one pitch development sessions, individualized consultancies and a practice pitch session with a group of genre industry professionals.

The Lab will culminate with a dedicated pitch session at the Frontières copro market, which runs July 24 to 27.

The Genre Film Lab 2024 is supported by Telefilm Canada and Frontières Market.

Image courtesy of GEMS