David Paul Cronenberg is a Canadian film director, screenwriter, and actor. He is a principal originator of the genre commonly known as body horror, with his films exploring visceral bodily transformation, infectious diseases, and the intertwining of the psychological, physical, and technological. Cronenberg is best known for exploring these themes through sci-fi horror films such as Shivers (1975), Scanners (1981), Videodrome (1983) and The Fly (1986), though he has also directed dramas, psychological thrillers and gangster films.
Katharine Isobel Murray, known professionally as Katharine Isabelle, is a Canadian actress. She has been described as a scream queen due to her roles in various horror films. She started her acting career in 1989, playing a small role in the television series MacGyver. She gained fame for the role of Ginger Fitzgerald in the films Ginger Snaps, Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed, and Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning.
Rabid is a 1977 independent body horror film written and directed by David Cronenberg. An international co-production of Canada and the United States, the film stars Marilyn Chambers in the lead role, supported by Frank Moore, Joe Silver, and Howard Ryshpan. Chambers plays a woman who, after being injured in a motorcycle accident and undergoing a surgical operation, develops an orifice under one of her armpits that hides a phallic/clitoral stinger she uses to feed on people's blood. Those she bites become infected, and then feed upon others, spreading the disease exponentially. The result is massive chaos, starting in the Quebec countryside, and ending up in Montreal. Rabid made $1 million in Canada, making it one of the highest-grossing Canadian films of all time. A remake of the same name, directed by Jen and Sylvia Soska, was released in 2019.
Alexander Mackenzie Gray is a Canadian film, television, and stage actor. He is a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and Canada. He divides his time between Toronto and Vancouver.
The winners of the Vancouver Film Critics Circle Award for Best Film are listed below:
Screamfest Horror Film Festival is a horror film festival founded by film producers Rachel Belofsky and Ross Martin in August 2001. It runs over ten days during the month of October and is hosted at the TCL Chinese 6 Theatres in Los Angeles, California. In 2015, the festival celebrated its fifteenth anniversary and has been credited as being the largest and longest running horror film festival in the United States. The 2016 Screamfest was from October 18 through the 27.
Sarah Lynn Gadon is a Canadian actress. She began her acting career guest-starring in a number of television series, such as Are You Afraid of the Dark? (1999), Mutant X (2002), and Dark Oracle (2004). She also worked as a voice actress on various television productions. Gadon gained recognition for her roles in David Cronenberg's films A Dangerous Method (2011), Cosmopolis (2012), and Maps to the Stars (2014). She also starred in Denis Villeneuve's thriller Enemy (2013), the period drama Belle (2013), and the action horror film Dracula Untold (2014).
Laura Dianne Vandervoort is a Canadian actress. She is best known for her roles as Sadie Harrison in the CTV teen drama series Instant Star, Arla "The Bolt-Gun Killer" Cogan in the Syfy supernatural drama series Haven, Kara Zor-El (Supergirl) in The CW serial drama series Smallville, and as Lisa in the ABC science fiction series V (2009). In 2014, she starred in the Space channel drama series Bitten, a television adaptation of Kelley Armstrong's book series Women of the Otherworld as Elena Michaels.
Smash Cut is a 2009 Canadian slasher film directed and edited by Lee Demarbre, and produced by Robert Menzies. Starring David Hess, Sasha Grey, Michael Berryman, Ray Sager and Herschell Gordon Lewis, the plot follows a struggling filmmaker who finds that practical effects are much easier to come by.
Stephen Huszar is a Canadian film and television actor born in Saskatoon. He is first generation Canadian, his parents arriving from Hungary as immigrants when they were very young. His family tree goes back eight or nine hundred years in the Transylvania region of Romania. He graduated from the University of Saskatchewan.
Jen Soska and Sylvia Soska, also known as The Soska Sisters or The Twisted Twins, are Canadian twin sisters who collaborate as film directors, producers and screenwriters. They are known for directing often violent and visceral horror movies such as Dead Hooker in a Trunk, See No Evil 2 and American Mary.
Brandon Cronenberg is a Canadian director and screenwriter. He is the son of renowned filmmaker David Cronenberg and the brother of Caitlin Cronenberg. He is known for his science fiction horror films Antiviral (2012), Possessor (2020) and Infinity Pool (2023). He has won several accolades for his work.
Patricio Valladares is a Chilean film director, screenwriter and comic book writer, best known for his work in horror films, who mixes elements of both arthouse and grindhouse, with an emphasis on modern extreme violence, action and some gore. He is also involved in comics and short movies, and frequently injects black humor or homages to grindhouse movies, along with artistic cinematography, somewhat intellectual dialogue and the occasional surrealism. His serial killers tend to make repeat appearances in his movies.
Chloe Rose is a Canadian actress. She rose to prominence when she portrayed Katie Matlin in the long-running teen drama television series Degrassi: The Next Generation, from 2011 to 2013. Following her time on Degrassi, Rose starred in the web series Teenagers (2014–2017), earning several award nominations for her performance as the lead protagonist, Bree. Rose has also starred in feature films such as Anita Doron's The Lesser Blessed (2012), Bruce McDonald's Hellions (2015), and Adam MacDonald's Pyewacket (2017).
The Toronto International Film Festival Award for Best Canadian Short Film, formerly also known as the NFB John Spotton Award, is an annual film award, presented by the Toronto International Film Festival to a film judged to be the best Canadian short film of the festival. As of 2017, the award is sponsored by International Watch Company and known as the "IWC Short Cuts Award for Best Canadian Short Film".
Red Letter Day is a Canadian satirical horror feature film, released in 2019. The film follows what happens in an isolated suburban community when the entire neighborhood receives red letters instructing them to kill one of their neighbors before their neighbor kills them. The film was released in North America by Epic Pictures Group under their DREAD label on Blu-ray and VOD in November 2019.
Cameron Macgowan, is a Canadian writer, director, and producer. His first feature film as a Writer/Director Red Letter Day premiered at the Cinequest Film Festival in 2019. The film was a hit on the international genre film festival circuit with screenings at London FrightFest Film Festival, Screamfest Horror Film Festival, Fantaspoa, Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival and more. The film received positive critical attention, including Screen Anarchy saying "It plays like a modern mash-up of David Cronenberg's Shivers (film) and Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale (film)." and renowned English journalist Kim Newman saying "A terrific premise, ferociously well worked out, and an excellent performance from Dawn Van de Schoot as an unwilling tiger mommy.".
Kelly Fyffe-Marshall is a Canadian filmmaker best known for her 2020 two-part short film Black Bodies, which won the Changemaker Award at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival, and won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Live Action Short Drama at the 9th Canadian Screen Awards in 2021.
The DGC Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film is an annual Canadian award, presented by the Directors Guild of Canada to honour the year's best direction in feature films in Canada.
The DGC Allan King Award for Best Documentary Film is an annual Canadian award, presented by the Directors Guild of Canada to honour the year's best direction in documentary films in Canada. The award was renamed in 2010 to honour influential Canadian documentarian Allan King following his death in 2009. Individual episodes of documentary television series have occasionally been nominated for the award, although nominees and winners are usually theatrical documentary films.
