A gathering space for emerging filmmakers and independent creators.

Session Participants

Pascal Plante   

Director/Co-Writer, Nadia, Butterfly

Pascal is a Montreal-based filmmaker whose film Nadia, Butterfly was an Official Selection of Cannes 2020. His first narrative feature, a punk romance entitled Fake Tattoos, competed at the Berlinale in 2018. After his graduation from Concordia University’s Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, Pascal co-founded the production company Nemesis Films, with which he directed numerous short films, including BLAST BEAT, Blue-Eyed Blonde, and Nonna.

Case Study: Nadia, Butterfly

Dominique Dussault   

Producer, Nadia, Butterfly

Dominique holds a Masters in Management from HEC Montréal with a specialization in Marketing of Arts and Entertainment, and has worked in film distribution for Entertainment One. She has produced many short films that have been selected for festivals such as TIFF, Sundance and SXSW. Dominique won the EVS Best Emerging Producer Prize at the 2019 Fantasia International Film Festival for the short film Red Wine.

Case Study: Nadia, Butterfly

Stéphanie Anne Weber Biron   

Cinematographer, Nadia, Butterfly

Stéphanie’s award-winning cinematography for Xavier Dolan’s feature films I Killed My Mother and Heartbeats put her at the forefront of Canadian and world cinema. She has shot many feature films, including Jason Buxton’s Blackbird and Guy Maddin’s The Forbidden Room. Stéphanie lives in Montreal but has shot films in London, New York, Berlin, and all over Canada.
Case Study: Nadia, Butterfly

Joëlle Péloquin   

Production Designer, Nadia Butterfly

Joëlle is a production designer and artistic director who has been working in the film industry for a decade. She has collaborated with several filmmakers on award-winning feature films, including Kuessipan by Myriam Verreault and All You Can Eat Buddha by Ian Lagarde. Joëlle has also worked on many short films and signed the scenography of various plays. A graduate of Concordia University in film production, she continued her studies in scenography at the National Theater School of Canada.

Case Study: Nadia, Butterfly

Host: Shirley Vercruysse   

Executive Producer, BC & Yukon Studio, National Film Board of Canada

Shirley is the Executive Producer of the National Film Board of Canada’s BC & Yukon Studio, where she leads the team producing documentary and animation projects. The studio’s new releases include the feature-length documentaries The Magnitude of All Things and Sovereign Soil, and its recent releases include The Whale and the Raven and Because We Are Girls. Short works include the documentaries Now Is the Time and Highway to Heaven.

Case Study: Nadia, Butterfly

Session Participants

Garrett Bradley   

Director, Time

Garrett works across narrative, documentary, and experimental modes of filmmaking to address themes such as race, class, familial relationships, social justice, Southern culture and the history of film in the US. She has received numerous prizes, including the Sundance 2020 Best Director Award in the US Documentary Feature Competition for Time and the Sundance 2017 Jury Prize for the New York Times OpDocs short film Alone.

Focus on Debut Docs

Michelle Latimer   

Director, Inconvenient Indian

Michelle is an award-winning filmmaker, producer, writer, and activist. She is currently showrunning and directing the scripted series Trickster and has completed the feature doc Inconvenient Indian, an adaptation of Thomas King’s book. In 2016, Michelle chronicled the Standing Rock occupation protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline as part of the eight-part Indigenous resistance series RISE (Viceland), for which she was also the showrunner and director.

Focus on Debut Docs

Host: Kevin Eastwood   

Producer, Haida Modern

Kevin is an award-winning filmmaker based in Vancouver. His credits as director include the CBC Television documentaries Humboldt: The New Season and After the Sirens (both nominated for Best Documentary Program at the Canadian Screen Awards), and the Knowledge Network doc series Emergency Room: Life + Death At VGH. His credits as a producer include the documentaries Haida Modern and Haida Gwaii: On the Edge Of The World.

Focus on Debut Docs

Indie Spirits

September 26, 2020, 1:15 pm - 2:15 pm

The pandemic has created a disrupted theatrical-release and festival-circuit situation that has wreaked havoc on many filmmakers’ projects, as well as their distribution and release strategies. Our featured auteurs, each at different stages in their careers, have risen to this challenge, successfully managed to bring their stories to life, and earned multiple awards and rave reviews along the way.

Session Participants

Eliza Hittman   

Writer/Director, Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Eliza is an award-winning filmmaker, born and based in Brooklyn, NY. Her latest film, the critically acclaimed Never Rarely Sometimes Always, was released by Focus Features this spring following its international premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, where it won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Award. Beach Rats, Eliza’s previous film, premiered in the US Dramatic Competition at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, where she won the Directing Award.

Indie Spirits

Kris Rey   

Director, I Used to Go Here

Kris’s debut feature, It Was Great, But I Was Ready to Come Home, which she wrote, directed, and starred in, played in competition at SXSW in 2009. Her next feature, Empire Builder (2012), starred Kate Lyn Sheil, Bill Ross IV, and Joe Swanberg, and her third feature, Unexpected, premiered in competition at the Sundance Film Festival in 2015. Kris lives and works in Chicago, and teaches film production at Northwestern University.

Indie Spirits

Amy Seimetz   

Writer/Director, She Dies Tomorrow

A writer, director, actor, and producer, Amy Seimetz is best known as the co-creator and executive producer of The Girlfriend Experience, which was nominated for a Golden Globe in 2016. Her directorial debut feature film, Sun Don’t Shine, won a special jury prize at SXSW in 2012 and was nominated for two Gotham Awards. Notable acting credits include Upstream Color, Pet Sematary, Alien: Covenant, Netflix’s Stranger Things, and AMC’s The Killing.

Indie Spirits

Host: Curtis Woloschuk

Associate Director of Programming, Vancouver International Film Festival

Docu-Fiction: Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets

September 26, 2020, 2:30 pm - 3:30 pm

Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets, a semi-constructed documentary, is the latest from brothers Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross, whose films focus strongly on small communities of people. Set on the last night of a beloved Vegas dive bar, the film is populated by a group of real-life folks; it won the True Vision Award at the True/False Film Festival and was an Official Selection of Sundance and Berlin. Join us for a not-to-be-missed conversation on the making of the hybrid doc, which is this year’s sleeper hit.

Session Participants

Bill Ross IV   

Co-Director, Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets

The Ross Brothers are an American filmmaking team whose credits include the award-winning films 45365, Tchoupitoulas, Western, and Contemporary Color. Born and raised in Sidney, Ohio, Bill and Turner are graduates of the Savannah College of Art and Design. Their films have earned them a reputation as two of the most innovative and interesting documentary filmmakers working today, with a style all their own. Bill and Turner live and work in New Orleans.

Docu-Fiction: Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets

Turner Ross   

Co-Director, Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets

The Ross Brothers are an American filmmaking team whose credits include the award-winning films 45365, Tchoupitoulas, Western, and Contemporary Color. Born and raised in Sidney, Ohio, Bill and Turner are graduates of the Savannah College of Art and Design. Their films have earned them a reputation as two of the most innovative and interesting documentary filmmakers working today, with a style all their own. Bill and Turner live and work in New Orleans.

Docu-Fiction: Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets

Host: Tom Charity   

Vancity Theatre Programmer