Bretten Hannam is a Canadian screenwriter and film director. [1]
A Two-Spirit, non-binary Mi'kmaq person, Hannam was born and raised in Nova Scotia. [1] Educated at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and Dalhousie University, they made a number of short films in their early career; the most noted of these, Deep End, premiered at the Atlantic Film Festival in 2011 [2] and was included in the short film compilation Boys on Film 9: Youth in Trouble . [3]
Their 2015 feature film, North Mountain , premiered at the Atlantic Film Festival in 2015 before going into limited commercial release in 2018. [4]
In 2018, they participated in Now and Then, an exhibition of works by LGBTQ artists in conjunction with the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives. [5] Their contribution was the short film Elmiteskuatl, an interrogation of the complex relationship between First Nations peoples and colonialist conceptions of archives and museums. [5]
Their most recent short film, Wildfire, was produced with the assistance of the Whistler Film Festival's Aboriginal Filmmaker Fellowship, [6] and premiered at BFI Flare in 2019. A feature film expansion of Wildfire, titled Wildhood , was funded by Telefilm Canada in June 2019, [7] and premiered at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival. [8] The film received six Canadian Screen Award nominations at the 10th Canadian Screen Awards in 2022, including nods for Hannam in both Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. [9]
In 2020, Hannam received a grant from the Inside Out Film and Video Festival's Re:Focus Emergency Relief Fund for the completion of a short documentary film titled Walqwin, about two-spirit culture in the Wabanaki Confederacy. [10]
Hannam was named the winner of the $10,000 Toronto Film Critics Association's Jay Scott Prize for emerging filmmakers in February 2022. [11]
Telefilm Canada is a Crown corporation reporting to Canada's federal government through the Minister of Canadian Heritage. Headquartered in Montreal, Telefilm provides services to the Canadian audiovisual industry with four regional offices in Vancouver, British Columbia; Toronto, Ontario; Montreal, Quebec; and Halifax, Nova Scotia. The primary mandate of the corporation is to finance and promote Canadian productions through its various funds and programs.
Ingrid Veninger is a Canadian actress, writer, director, producer, and film professor at York University. Veninger began her career in show business as a child actor in commercials and on television; as a teen, she was featured in the CBC series Airwaves (1986–1987) and the CBS series Friday the 13th: The Series (1987–1990). In the 1990s, she branched out into producing, and, in 2003, she founded her own production company, pUNK Films, through which she began to work on her own projects as a writer and director.
The Inside Out Film and Video Festival, also known as the Inside Out LGBT or LGBTQ Film Festival, is an annual Canadian film festival, which presents a program of LGBT-related film. The festival is staged in both Toronto and Ottawa. Founded in 1991, the festival is now the largest of its kind in Canada. Deadline dubbed it "Canada’s foremost LGBTQ film festival."
The Atlantic International Film Festival is a major international film festival held annually in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada since 1980. AIFF is the largest Canadian film festival east of Montreal, regularly premiering the region's top films of the year, while bringing the best films of the fall festival circuit to Atlantic Canada.
The Iris Prize, established in 2007 by Berwyn Rowlands of The Festivals Company, is an international LGBT film prize and festival which is open to any film which is by, for, about or of interest to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or intersex audiences and which must have been completed within two years of the prize deadline.
Rodrigue Jean is a Canadian film director, screenwriter, and producer of Acadian origin. He has been a theatre director, dancer and choreographer.
North Country Cinema is a Canadian media arts collective based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Trevor Mack is a Tsilhqot'in Canadian filmmaker, writer, philosopher and former Crashed Ice extreme sports athlete.
Kyle Thomas is a Canadian screenwriter, director, producer, and actor. His first feature film, The Valley Below, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2014. It garnered two Canadian Screen Award nominations in the categories of Best Supporting Actor for Kris Demeanor and Best Original Song for Dan Mangan's "Wants". The film received largely positive reviews from the Canadian media, including The Globe and Mail and the National Post, who called the film a "superb first feature".
North Mountain is a 2015 Canadian action thriller film. Written and directed by Bretten Hannam and billed as a "cross between Brokeback Mountain and Rambo", the film stars Justin Rain as Wolf, a young Mi'kmaq hunter who encounters Crane, a wanted fugitive, in the forest. The two men fall in love and begin a relationship, which is tested when the gangsters looking for Crane arrive.
Ashley McKenzie is a Canadian director, screenwriter, and editor. She is known for her feature film directorial debut Werewolf (2016), which won numerous accolades, including the $100,000 Toronto Film Critics Association prize for best Canadian film of the year.
Jasmin Mozaffari is a Canadian film director and screenwriter. She won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Director at the 7th Canadian Screen Awards in 2019 for her debut feature film Firecrackers.
TJ Cuthand, also credited as Theo Cuthand and Thirza Cuthand, is a filmmaker and performance artist, writer and curator of Plains Cree as well as Scottish and Irish descent. He is credited with coining the term Indigiqueer, for modern Indigenous LGBTQ people. In May 2022, he changed his name to TJ Cuthand and came out as a trans man.
Peter Knegt is a Canadian writer, producer, and filmmaker. He is the recipient of five Canadian Screen Awards and his CBC Arts column Queeries received the 2019 Digital Publishing Award for best digital column in Canada.
Gail Maurice is a Canadian actress, writer, and producer. She is most noted for her performances as the title character in the film Johnny Greyeyes, Dorothy Pine in the television series Cardinal, and Georgina in the television series Trickster.
Wildhood is a 2021 Canadian coming-of-age romantic drama film, written, produced, and directed by Bretten Hannam.
Chandler Levack is a Canadian writer and filmmaker. She is a two-time Juno Award nominee for Video of the Year, receiving nominations alongside Jeremy Schaulin-Rioux at the Juno Awards of 2015 for directing PUP's "Guilt Trip" music video, and at the Juno Awards of 2016 for directing PUP's "Dark Days" music video. She was also a Prism Prize nominee for both "Guilt Trip" and "Dark Days", and has also directed music videos for DZ Deathrays and Jeremy Dutcher.
Gharrett Patrick Paon is a Canadian actor and film producer. He is most noted as a producer of the 2021 film Wildhood, which was a Canadian Screen Award nominee for Best Picture at the 10th Canadian Screen Awards in 2021.
Christian Sparkes is a Canadian film director and screenwriter from St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. He is most noted for his film Cast No Shadow, which was a Canadian Screen Award nominee for Best Picture at the 3rd Canadian Screen Awards in 2015.