Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre is a Montreal-based filmmaker most notable for her animated documentary films.
Elissa Down is an Australian filmmaker, who in 1999 and 2000, was nominated for Young Film-maker of the year at the WA Screen Awards.
The Berlin International Film Festival, usually called the Berlinale, is a major international film festival held annually in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the festival has been held every February since 1978 and is one of Europe's "Big Three" film festivals alongside the Venice Film Festival held in Italy and the Cannes Film Festival held in France. Furthermore, it is one of the "Big Five", the most prestigious film festivals in the world. The festival regularly draws tens of thousands of visitors each year.
Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette is a Canadian novelist, film director, and screenwriter from Quebec. Her films are known for their "organic, participatory feel." Barbeau-Lavalette is the daughter of filmmaker Manon Barbeau and cinematographer Philippe Lavalette, and the granddaughter of artist Marcel Barbeau.
Zhang Lü is a Chinese filmmaker. Zhang was originally a novelist before embarking on a career in cinema. His arthouse films have mostly focused on the disenfranchised, particularly ethnic Koreans living in China; these include Grain in Ear (2006), Desert Dream (2007), Dooman River (2011), Scenery (2013), and Gyeongju (2014).
Kathleen Hepburn is a Canadian screenwriter and film director. She first attracted acclaim for her film Never Steady, Never Still, which premiered as a short film in 2015 before being expanded into her feature film debut in 2017. The film received eight Canadian Screen Award nominations at the 6th Canadian Screen Awards in 2018, including Best Picture and a Best Original Screenplay nomination for Hepburn.
Resurrecting Hassan is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Carlo Guillermo Proto and released in 2016. The documentary centres on the Hartings, a family of blind musicians in Montreal who supported themselves by busking in the Guy-Concordia station of the Montreal Metro.
The 69th annual Berlin International Film Festival took place from 7 to 17 February 2019. French actress Juliette Binoche served as the Jury President. Lone Scherfig's drama film The Kindness of Strangers opened the festival. The Golden Bear was won by Israeli-French drama Synonyms directed by Nadav Lapid, which also served as the closing film of the festival.
The 70th annual Berlin International Film Festival took place from 20 February to 1 March 2020. It was the first under the leadership of new Berlin Film Festival heads, business administration director Mariette Rissenbeek and artistic director Carlo Chatrian. The festival opened with the opening gala presented by actor Samuel Finzi followed by the world premiere of the film My Salinger Year which was selected for the Berlinale Special section. The Golden Bear was awarded to the Iranian film There Is No Evil, directed by Mohammad Rasoulof.
Prayer for a Lost Mitten is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Jean-François Lesage and released in 2020. The film centres on the lost and found office of the Montreal Metro system.
Goddess of the Fireflies is a Canadian drama film, directed by Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette and released in 2020. An adaptation of the novel by Geneviève Pettersen, the film centres on the coming of age of Catherine, a teenage girl living in a small town in Quebec in the early 1990s.
Tiffany Hsiung is a Canadian documentary filmmaker. She is most noted for her 2016 documentary film The Apology, which won a Peabody Award in 2019, and her 2020 short documentary film Sing Me a Lullaby, which won the Share Her Journey award at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival, and the Canadian Screen Award for Best Short Documentary at the 9th Canadian Screen Awards in 2021.
Call Me Human is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Kim O'Bomsawin and released in 2020. The film is a portrait of Innu poet Joséphine Bacon.
Halima Ouardiri is a Swiss-Canadian film director, producer, and screenwriter.
Mokhtar is a Canadian short drama film, directed by Halima Ouardiri and released in 2010. Shot in Morocco, the film centres on a young boy from a family of goatherds, who brings home an injured owl but must confront his superstitious father's belief that the bird is an omen of bad luck. The film was based on a true story, told to Ouardiri by the handyman who worked for a family she was staying with on a trip to Morocco, about his own childhood experience.
The 71st annual Berlin International Film Festival took place from 1 to 5 March 2021 as a virtual festival due to the COVID-19 pandemic. An in-person event has also been tentatively scheduled for June, pending the resolution of the COVID-19 issue.
Wandering: A Rohingya Story is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Mélanie Carrier and Olivier Higgins and released in 2020. The film is a portrait of the Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh, which houses a large number of refugees from the Rohingya conflict in Myanmar.
Goodbye Golovin is a Canadian short drama film, directed by Mathieu Grimard and released in 2019. The film stars Oleksandr Rudynskyy as Ian Golovin, a young man in Ukraine who is considering whether to emigrate to a new country for a shot at a better life after the death of his father.
In the Shadow of the Pines is a Canadian animated short documentary film, directed by Anne Koizumi and released in 2020. An exploration of her grief around the death of her father in the early 2010s, the film centres on an imagined conversation with him about her childhood shame that he was employed as the janitor at her school, thus exposing her to her classmates as the daughter of a working class immigrant.
Kristina Wagenbauer is a Canadian film director and screenwriter based in Montreal, Quebec. She is most noted for her 2017 feature film Sashinka, for which she was a Prix Iris nominee for Best Casting at the 21st Quebec Cinema Awards in 2019, and her 2021 short film Babushka, which was a Canadian Screen Award nominee for Best Short Documentary at the 10th Canadian Screen Awards in 2022.
