Skip to main content
Delta Dawn film image; woman putting on Indigenous headdress

Delta Dawn

VIFF Short Forum

World Premiere

This documentary follows Dawn Murphy, or “Princess Delta Dawn”, who rose to fame in the 1980s and early 1990s and became the first Indigenous woman wrestler and the first Canadian woman wrestler to compete in Japan.

 

Supported by

    

Media Partner

Community Partner

Director
Featuring

Alyssa Scott, Dawn Murphy

Credits
Country of Origin

Canada

Year

2023

Language

English

Film Contact
Links
18+
26 min
BC Spotlight Documentary Indigenous Cinema Shorts Women Directors
Visceral Village Productions Inc.

Credits & Director

Producer

Mike Johnston

Screenwriter

Asia Youngman

Cinematography

Ben Cox, Kaayla Whachell

Editor

Michael Vidler

Production Design

Ryan MacInnes

Original Music

Justin Delorme

Asia Youngman headshot; Delta Dawn director

Asia Youngman

Asia Youngman is an award-winning director and screenwriter based in Vancouver, Canada. Named as one of Playback’s “10 to Watch”, she is an alumna from the TIFF Filmmaker Lab, the TIFF Talent Accelerator, the Canadian Academy Directors Program for Women, the Berlinale DocSalon Toolbox Programme and the Netflix-BANFF Diversity of Voices Initiative. Asia wrote and directed the short film Hatha (2021) and her short documentary This Ink Runs Deep (2019) had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. Most recently, she was the recipient of the Directors Guild of Canada BC Emerging Greenlight with her latest short film N’xaxaitk (2022) which was nominated for five Leo Awards. Asia’s television credits include Sinking Ship Entertainment’s ODD SQUAD MOBILE UNIT (PBS, TVO) and AMPLIFY (APTN). She is currently in post-production on a feature documentary with ESPN and has partnered with Entertainment One to adapt a novel from New York Times best-selling author Cynthia Leitich Smith for television.

 

Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre

All We Imagine as Light

Dir. Payal Kapadia
115 min

What Wong Kar-wai did for Hong Kong, Payal Kapadia does for Mumbai: the Cannes Grand Prix winner is a romantic heartbreaker about three nurses at different stages of life. It's a future classic.

VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Arthur Erickson: Beauty Between the Lines

Dir. Ryan Mah & Danny Berish
80 min

This new documentary offers the most complete account so far of the life and work of Canada's greatest architect, the man responsible for several of the finest buildings in Vancouver -- including the Museum of Anthropology and the SFU Campus.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Black Box Diaries

Dir. Shiori Ito
104 min

A first person true crime story, Shiori Ito's Black Box Dairies chronicles her long, difficult campaign to hold a veteran journalist (a friend of the Prime Minister) to account for rape.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Memoir of a Snail

Dir. Adam Elliot
94 min

A stellar Australian cast voice this charming and emotional animated feature by Adam Elliot, the tale of a lonely foster kid befriended by an eccentric elderly woman who turns her life around. (Not for kids!)

VIFF Centre - Vancity Theatre VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Bird

Dir. Andrea Arnold
119 min

In Andrea Arnold's latest, 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams) lives in a squat near the English seaside. Neglected by her chaotic father (Barry Keoghan), she pursues an adventure with a magnetic stranger named Bird (Franz Rogowski).

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Never Look Away

Dir. Lucy Lawless
84 min

A piercing portrait of CNN combat camerawoman Margaret Moth, who fearlessly captured images from Desert Storm, Bosnia, Rwanda, Lebanon, and never backed down, even after a near fatal bullet to the head.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre