Heather Young’s Murmur Awarded Top Prize at Slamdance Film Festival
Since her world premiere at TIFF 2019, Halifax filmmaker Heather Young’s acclaimed debut feature Murmur won the Slamdance Film Festival’s Grand Jury Award for Narrative Feature in Park City, Utah. Earlier in the fall, the film won several prizes on the festival circuit, including the FIPRESCI Discovery Prize at TIFF, and was also selected as one of Canada’s Top 10. Murmur was recently nominated for a 2020 Canadian Screen Award for the John Dunning Best First Feature Film category.
Talent to Watch Nominees at the Canadian Screen Awards
Nominations were announced in February by the Canadian Academy. In addition to Heather Young’s nomination, other Talent to Watch alumni nominations include:
(Jonathan Beaulieu-Cyr / Renaud Lessard) – nominee for the 2020 John Dunning Best First Feature Film award.
(Supinder Wraich), nominated for Best web Program or Series, Fiction; Best Lead Performance (Supinder Wraich); Best Writing (Supinder Wraich)
(Winnifred Jong), Best Direction, Web Program or Series; Best Lead Performance (Connie Wang); Best Supporting Performance (Jessica Greco); Best Writing (Winnifred Jong)
Due to COVID-19 pandemic Canadian Screen Week activities in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, including the national broadcast gala planned for March 29 were cancelled. The Academy is committed to the celebration of Canadian Screen Award nominees and honourees and we look forward to their future plans in the months ahead.
Big Win at Prime Time’s Power Pitch Competition
Food for the Rest of Us, from Northwest Territories filmmaker Caroline Cox, was awarded with $20,000 at annual industry conference Prime Time in Ottawa this past January, to go towards post-production, audio and marketing by the Canadian Media Producers Association-hosted “Prime Time’s Power Pitch Competition”.
The funds will help Cox wrap up Food for the Rest of Us, a feature documentary highlighting the connection between activism and harvesting food. It has also been selected for funding from Hot Docs Ted Rogers Fund, which was announced in Playback and Realscreen magazine.
TIFF Writers’ Studio
Talent to Watch alumni Cory Bowles (Black Cop), Jasmin Mozaffari (Firecrakers) and Sanja Živković (Easy Land) were among the eight participants tapped for TIFF Writers’ Studio 2020, a five-day intensive workshop that began in March at Toronto’s TIFF Bell Lightbox, designed for mid-level screenwriters and writer/directors across Canada to sharpen their creative and business skills. Congratulations, all!
Tammy’s Always Dying, the sophomore feature from Talent to Watch alumna Amy Jo Johnson (The Space Between, 2017) was recently picked up by Quiver Distribution plans to roll out the feature on digital platforms everywhere in May 2020.
And, congratulations to Talent to Watch alumnus Randall Okita who was recently selected at Sundance 2020 (World Premiere) for its VR project The Book of Distance.
