Over the course of three decades, volume was never the game for film and TV producers Jennifer Kawaja and Julia Sereny. Rather, they chose to curate a slate of projects they knew they could do well.
“We wanted to tell stories that had meaning and substance, and that would find audiences all over the world,” Sereny tells Playback. “We felt that wasn’t a contradiction. It wasn’t always how other people saw it, but for us, those two things went together.”
Known for most of their careers as Sienna Films – the name was retired four years ago – they forged their reputation with acclaimed features such as New Waterford Girl (1999), Marion Bridge (2002) and I, Claudia (2004), and expanded to TV series with Combat Hospital (2011), Ransom (2017-19), Cardinal (2017-20) and Sort Of (2021-24). Their shows achieved either critical or commercial success, sometimes both.
Sereny began her career working at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and went on to be a producer on the well-received documentary Ravel (1987) from Toronto’s Rhombus Media. She struck out on her own and hung out the Sienna shingle in 1992, taking the name from a poster on her office wall that she had bought in Sienna, Italy.
She began a loose collaboration with Kawaja around the time of the release of Sienna’s first feature, April One (1994), and the latter formally joined the company a couple of years later.
“How we began was an intuitive, organic process,” recalls Sereny. “We sat in one room together, and it was a constant volleying back and forth. We could both be on everything or either one of us could take over anything. It was a fluid approach.”
Their projects embrace their Canadian settings, even if that meant shooting investigative drama Cardinal in northern Ontario amidst ice, snow, floods, locusts and mayflies. Based on novels by Giles Blunt and unfolding in a thinly disguised version of North Bay, Ont., the series stars Billy Campbell and Karine Vanasse, who got to play to her Québécois roots.
The series regularly brought more than one million viewers to CTV (airing in French on Super Écran), and sold to Europe, Australia, South America, Israel and the U.S., where it streams on Hulu.
“With Aubrey Nealon showrunning the first season, we were able to take our indie film experience of creating specific worlds on location and add a Canadian noir element to a familiar genre,” says Kawaja, who currently produces English scripted content at Sphere Media, which bought Sienna from Kew Media Group in 2020. (Sereny now produces independently.)
Nealon returns the kudos.
“It was my first time as showrunner and that was a tough show to make,” he says. “But the harder it got, the more I admired Jennifer and Julia. They have the creative and producing chops to do good work, but also bring plain human decency. And that can be a hard combination to find. I felt like I could trust them and that I was in the battle with good people.”
Nealon also co-wrote the pilot for The Porter (2022), which Sphere produced with Winnipeg-based Inferno Pictures for CBC and BET+. “It was challenging to find financing for The Porter and it was politically tricky, but Jennifer just wouldn’t let that show not happen,” he says. “She and Julia are tenacious.”
The Porter tells the story of 1920s Canadian and American train porters who formed the first Black labour union. It impressed with its period production value on a tight budget, and ran the table at the Canadian Screen Awards with a dozen wins.
It was one of several acclaimed series the producers brought to CBC, which appreciated their collaborative spirit. Sally Catto, CBC’s GM, entertainment, factual and sports, ranks them among the country’s finest producers.
“What made them distinct is their gift for identifying, supporting and bringing the best out of talent,” says Catto. “They would remain directly connected to the creative process throughout, but never in a way that was intrusive or disrespectful to [the writers]. They excelled at connecting both with broadcasters and talent, and that requires a special skill.”
Despite acclaim for The Porter, BET+ pulled out and it didn’t make it to season two.
The U.S. streamer ultimately found the story too Canadian-focused, even though those concerns had been addressed in development, according to Kawaja.
It was reminiscent of when, after one season, ABC dropped Combat Hospital, which follows Canadian and international doctors in Afghanistan, and was a huge local success, frequently surpassing 1.5 million viewers for Global.
ABC decided the show wasn’t American enough. “So what does it mean when Canadians can’t afford to produce their own stories, both for those of us in the industry and for the social fabric of the country?” says Kawaja.
Reliable capitalization was the motive behind Sienna being sold to ill-fated conglomerate Kew Media in 2017. “Running a small production company is very ‘stop and start,'” Sereny explains. “You get something made and then you’re starting again at zero. So we would have to develop more things. As we grew, we had staff that had been with us for a long time and felt committed to them. We had to make sure we were properly financed. It was an inevitable part of success.”
Kew’s backing enabled the CBC series Trickster (2020), based on the book trilogy by Eden Robinson, to get off the ground. Foreign presales were elusive, but, as Kawaja explains, “Kew stepped in and made it possible to move forward, and we are forever grateful because it was one of the most exciting things we made.”
Playback‘s Scripted Series of the Year in 2020, Trickster broke ground as an Indigenous-driven horror drama, telling the story of a teen who becomes increasingly aware of his magical powers. As is often the case, once it was in the can, foreign broadcasters started picking it up, including The CW in the U.S.
When the overextended Kew collapsed in early 2020, Sphere stepped in, bought Sienna, salvaged the show’s distribution rights and allowed for the development and production of The Porter and Sort Of.
But further drama killed Trickster‘s planned second season. Showrunner and director Michelle Latimer resigned after questions arose surrounding her Indigenous heritage claims; and instead of replacing her, the production shut down at Robinson’s insistence.
“It was painful for everyone,” reflects Kawaja. “We were developing season two and everyone was trying to figure out how to go forward, but the author was hesitant to do so. And while we could have gone forward, both CBC and Sphere felt we had to respect her wishes.”
There was no sad ending for Sort Of, however. The boundary-pushing comedy-drama about a non-binary millennial trying to manage their Pakistani immigrant parents and the rest of their complicated life enjoyed three critically acclaimed seasons on CBC, and won Best Comedy Series at the Canadian Screen Awards two years in a row.
Co-commissioned by HBO Max (since rebranded to Max), the show was picked up by Sky in the U.K. and M6 channel Téva in France. It garnered rave reviews and won a prestigious Peabody Award, honouring the crème de la crème in media.
The project was brought to them by creators Bilal Baig – also the show’s star – and writer-director Fab Filippo. The producers feared shopping a script for this unique project might be ineffective, so the team agreed to shoot a sizzle reel.
“Comedy is the hardest thing to sell on the page,” Sereny offers. “It’s how one reads it and it’s all about timing. We were convinced this could be something really special and that was the best way to sell it.”
Baig and Filippo stated that the show was ending after season three, not because it was cancelled, but rather as their choice in agreement with the producers. Sort Of, Trickster and The Porter are the latest projects reflecting diverse characters and communities, something the producers addressed years earlier in one-offs such as the LGBTQ+ rom-com Touch of Pink (2004), step-dancing drama How She Move (2007), and CTV MOW One Dead Indian (2005) about the Ipperwash Crisis.
“That was always my mission,” says Kawaja. “I grew up in the Caribbean, and I went into media because I wanted to encourage a more diverse representation in front of and behind the camera. And at a time when that wasn’t a conversation, I got lucky because Julia felt the same way.”
Playback‘s Canadian Film and Television Hall of Fame was founded in 2007 to recognize extraordinary achievements in the Canadian entertainment industry. Inductees are selected by a jury of their peers.
Photos above by Alexis MacDonald; photos on the Cardinal set by Aubrey Nealon
