2020 AWARD WINNERS
Best Canadian Feature Film Winner
The Magnitude of All Things
Jennifer Abbott
Best Canadian Short Film Winner
Caribou in the Archive
Jennifer Dysart
Best International Feature Winner
The Red Line – Resistance in Hambach Forest
Karin de Miguel Wessendorf (Germany)
Best International Short Winner
This Land
Chelsea Jolly, Whit Hassett (USA)
Mark Haslam Award Winner
Makongo
Elvis Sabin Ngaïbino (Central African Republic)
2020 JURIES
Best Canadian Feature Jury
Brett Story
Filmmaker, 2019 Winner
Brett Story is a filmmaker and writer based in Toronto. Her films have screened internationally at festivals such as CPH-DOX, the Viennale, SXSW, True/False, and Sheffield Doc/Fest. Her 2016 feature documentary, The Prison in Twelve Landscapes, was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the Hot Docs Documentary Festival and was a nominee for Best Feature Documentary at the Canadian Screen Awards. Brett is the author of the book, Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power across Neoliberal America, and co-editor of the book, Digital Life in the Global City. Read more
Brett Story is a filmmaker and writer based in Toronto. Her films have screened internationally at festivals such as CPH-DOX, the Viennale, SXSW, True/False, and Sheffield Doc/Fest. Her 2016 feature documentary, The Prison in Twelve Landscapes, was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the Hot Docs Documentary Festival and was a nominee for Best Feature Documentary at the Canadian Screen Awards. Brett is the author of the book, Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power across Neoliberal America, and co-editor of the book, Digital Life in the Global City. Brett has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Sundance Documentary Institute and was named one of Variety’s 10 Documentary Filmmakers to Watch in 2019. She is an assistant professor in the School of Image Arts at Ryerson University, and her most recent award-winning feature documentary, The Hottest August, continues to screen around the world.
Elwood Jimmy
Programmer
Elwood Jimmy is a learner, collaborator, writer, artist, facilitator, cultural manager, and gardener. He is originally from Thunderchild First Nation, a Nêhiyaw community in the global north. For over 20 years, he has played a leadership role in several art projects, collectives, and organizations locally and abroad. With Vanessa Andreotti and Sharon Stein, he is the co-author of Towards Braiding, a book that gestures towards centring the planet within the building of wiser relationships and futures between Indigenous and settler communities.
Selin Murat
Programmer
The Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM) is one of North America’s leading documentary film festivals. Each year, the RIDM presents more than 100 Canadian and international documentaries. Its industry event, Forum RIDM, is Quebec’s only documentary forum. Selin is the Forum RIDM’s director of programming and programs films for the festival.
Best International Feature Film Jury
Alex Glustrom
Filmmaker, 2019 Winner
Alexander has directed, shot, produced, and edited a wide variety of film projects ranging from commercial, music, and art videos that have reached hundreds of thousands online, to documentaries that have been featured in film festivals internationally. His feature documentary “Mossville” has won more than fifteen awards at festivals around the world. It is currently broadcasting nationally on PBS, streaming on Amazon Prime and is scheduled to be shown to the United Nations in Geneva in October of 2020. Read more Alexander has directed, shot, produced, and edited a wide variety of film projects ranging from commercial, music, and art videos that have reached hundreds of thousands online, to documentaries that have been featured in film festivals internationally. He has shot footage that has aired on HBO, CNN, Fusion, NYtimes.com, Great Big Story and Democracy Now. He has also created a number of fundraising videos that have raised thousands of dollars for New Orleans youth programs. Alex’s first feature film was the award winning documentary, Big Charity, which he directed, shot, produced and edited. Big Charity won both the Jury and Audience Awards at the New Orleans Film Festival and is currently available on Amazon Prime. His second feature documentary “Mossville” has won more than fifteen awards at festivals around the world. Mossville is currently broadcasting nationally on PBS, streaming on Amazon Prime and is scheduled to be shown to the United Nations in Geneva in October of 2020.
Aisha Jamal
Programmer, Hot Docs
Marc Glassman
Editor, POV Magazine
Marc Glassman is the editor of the Canadian documentary magazine POV and film critic for Classical 96.3 FM. For six years, he was the senior programmer for the Planet in Focus festival. Marc is one of the founders of the Images Festival and was the first international programmer for Hot Docs. He is an adjunct professor at Ryerson University and the artistic director of Pages UnBound, which produces literary events.
Elise Labbé
Head of Festivals, NFB
Elise Labbé has been working for numerous years in different positions at the National Film Board of Canada, national public producer of award winning and creative works in Canada. Head of festivals and audience development since 2011, she has contributed over the years to launching hundreds of documentary and animated films. She has received the Queen’s Jubilee Medal for outstanding achievement in public service. Read more Elise Labbé has been working for numerous years in different positions at the National Film Board of Canada, national public producer of award winning and creative works in Canada. Head of festivals and audience development since 2011, she has contributed over the years to launching hundreds of documentary and animated films. After receiving a Bachelor of Visual Arts from University of Montreal, she became passionate about the extraordinary works and artists that were collaborating with the NFB. Since then, she has worked with the biggest names in contemporary animation and documentary filmmaking and has been investing much time and energy to defend their films. She has received the Queen’s Jubilee Medal for outstanding achievement in public service.
Best Canadian Short Film Jury
Caroline Underwood
Producer, CBC Nature of Things
Caroline Underwood is an Executive Producer and Wildlife and Science Documentary Consultant. Until 2015 she was Senior Producer and the Commissioning Editor for CBC’s The Nature of Things. Recent series include The Wild Canadian Year, Equus: The Story of the Horse, Wild Canada and The Great Human Odyssey. She has been involved with Planet in Focus for more than 17 years. Read more
Caroline Underwood is an Executive Producer and a Wildlife & Science Documentary Consultant. From 2008-2015 she was Senior Producer/Commissioning Editor for The Nature of Things, the CBC’s flagship science series. Recent series include The Wild Canadian Year, Equus: The Story of the Horse, Wild Canada and The Great Human Odyssey. She has been involved with Planet in Focus for more than 17 years.
She has produced, directed and written more than twenty-five of her own award-winning documentaries for The Nature of Things and independent production companies. The focus of her work has been the natural world and she has travelled to many remote locations, from the Arctic to the Antarctic, to reveal the beauty, complexity and the threats facing some of the planet’s last great wildernesses and their inhabitants. She has had countless extraordinary wildlife experiences: from standing among half a million caribou, to camping on the tundra where wolves walked past her tent, to unexpected encounters with a grizzly bears in the remote rainforests of British Columbia. No stranger to debate, she has explored many contentious subjects over the years – the use of animals in medical research, wolf management and climate change. She is a founding member and past president of the international organization Filmmakers for Conservation.
Anastasia Laukkanen
Director, ECOCUP Film Festival
Anastasia Laukkanen is a founder and a program director of the International ECOCUP Green Documentary Film Festival that has been taking place in cities of Russia and CIS countries since 2010. She lives between Moscow and Istanbul where she is a part of a team of the International Sustainable Living Film Festival. Anastasia has a background in journalism and has a Master of Science in Sustainability (Sweden).
Jason Anderson
Programmer, TIFF
Jason Anderson is a film programmer, journalist and lecturer based in Toronto. He is the lead programmer for the Short Cuts program at the Toronto International Film Festival and the director of programming for Aspen Shortsfest and the Kingston Canadian Film Festival. A former critic and columnist for Eye Weekly and The Grid in Toronto, he regularly writes about film and music for publications as Uncut Mag, Sight & Sound, Cinema Scope and Movie Entertainment.
Greg Klymkiw
Executive Director, The Winnipeg Film Group
Greg Klymkiw is a producer, screenwriter, teacher and journalist who is currently the Executive Director of The Winnipeg Film Group and previously served as the Producer-in-Residence and Senior Creative Consultant at The Canadian Film Centre.
Best International Short Film Jury
Guillerme Gehr
Filmmaker, Winner 2019
Guilherme was born in Santa Catarina State, South of Brazil, where he got a bachelor’s degree in Cinema and Video at the Universidade do Sul de Santa Catarina, having done a lot of work on painting and drawing and, mainly, Set Design and Art Direction. Being a designer by passion, at the end of the course he turned his attention to animation.
Eleonora Isunza
Director, Cinema Planeta
Eleonora Isunza de Pech started to work from 1988 at the Radio and Television Institute of Morelos as a writer, producer and presenter. In 2009, she co-founded Cinema Planeta, the International Festival of Environmental Films of Mexico which she has co-directed ever since. From 2011 to 2013, she hosted a film program on the news channel TVC Ambientales. She is founder and board member of the Green Film Network as well as the Culture Seminar of Mexico, Chapter Cuernavaca, and the Mexican Film Festivals Network. Read more Eleonora started to work from 1988 at the Radio and Television Institute of Morelos as a writer, producer and presenter. In 2009, she co-founded Cinema Planeta, the International Festival of Environmental Films of Mexico which she has co-directed ever since. From 2011 to 2013, she hosted a film program on the news channel TVC Ambientales. She is founder and board member of the Green Film Network as well as the Culture Seminar of Mexico, Chapter Cuernavaca, and the Mexican Film Festivals Network. Since 2010, she´s ben part of juries for environmental film festivals in France, Italy, Brazil, and Portugal. In 2016, produced and co-directed her first feature film “Nahui Ollin, Sol de Movimiento,” which deals with the topic of climate change in Mexico. In 2018, she once again brings attention to the impact of climate change with her documentary “El mar incendiado” (The burnt sea). She starts with several activists in Morelos the anti-plastics group with which it has been possible to ban single use plastic, polystyrene, straws and plastic bags in her region and 29 of the 32 states of the country.
Marni Goldman
Producer
Marni Goldman has extensive experience as a producer, writer and director on large studio shoots and in field productions. She has honed her skills working on a wide range of award winning factual, documentary & entertainment programming, including stints at the NFB, Chum Television, and the CBC Documentary Unit. She is also a Ryerson RTA School of Media Instructor. She is also a dedicated supporter of the arts and has served on many juries including The Toronto Outdoor Art Fair, CLIX Photography Competition, the Banff Rockie Awards and the Canadian Screen Awards. Read more In her role as Production Executive of Original Lifestyle Content at Corus Entertainment, Marni oversees the development and production of top-rated HGTV Canada and Food Network Canada television series. Her slate of hit shows include Island of Bryan, Home To Win and Top Chef Canada. Prior to joining Corus, Marni spent five years as a Production Executive at Rogers Media (The Liquidator, Wild Things with Dominic Monaghan, and Storage Wars Canada among many others). Marni has extensive experience as a producer, writer and director on large studio shoots and in field productions. She has honed her skills working on a wide range of award-winning factual, documentary and entertainment programming, including stints at the National Film Board, Chum Television, and the CBC Documentary Unit. She is also a Ryerson RTA School of Media Instructor. Marni is known for her keen eye, endless energy and collaborative style. She is also a dedicated supporter of the arts and has served on many juries including The Toronto Outdoor Art Fair, CLIX Photography Competition, the Banff Rockie Awards and the Canadian Screen Awards.
Cynthia Amsden
Film Publicist
With 200+ film/television credits to her name, Amsden has handled TV, features, shorts, and documentaries as unit/launch publicist and as a festival publicist at Cannes, TIFF, Sundance & Fantasia. Amsden was the publicist for Michelle Latimer’s Inconvenient Indian and Trickster at TIFF 20; Sarah Polley’s double Oscar-nominee Away From Her, Take This Waltz & Stories We Tell; and for Blue Ice Pictures: The Book of Negroes, Cairo Time, Lucky, Inescapable, October Gale & Madiba; Read more With 200+ film/television credits to her name, Amsden has handled TV, features, shorts, and documentaries as unit/launch publicist and as a festival publicist at Cannes, TIFF, Sundance and Fantasia. Amsden was the publicist for Michelle Latimer’s Inconvenient Indian and Trickster at TIFF 20; Sarah Polley’s double Oscar-nominee Away From Her, Take This Waltz and Stories We Tell; Andrew Cividino’s Sleeping Giant; and for Blue ice Pictures, The Book of Negroes, Cairo Time, The Bang Bang Club, Lucky, Inescapable, October Gale and Madiba; for Copperheart Entertainment’s Come True, In the Tall Grass, A Christmas Horror Story, Wolves, and Vincenzo Natali’s Splice and Haunter. She has worked with Guy Maddin, Atom Egoyan, Fernando Meirelles, and Sturla Gunnarsson. A thousand years ago, she wrote the press kit for Bowling for Columbine.
Mark Haslam Award Jury
Julian Carrington
Planet in Focus Programmer
Julian Carrington is a freelance writer and film programmer based in Toronto. He has contributed to publications including The Globe & Mail, Indiewire, and Cinema Scope, and, in 2014, served as a programming associate with the Toronto International Film Festival. In 2015, he became manger of the Documentary Organization of Canada’s Festival Concierge initiative, supporting filmmakers in developing distribution and audience engagement strategies. Julian joined Planet in Focus as the festival’s associate programmer in 2016.
Lesley Johnson
Planet in Focus Programmer
Lesley Johnson is a director, producer and programmer, based in Toronto and Yellowknife. She studied Film Production in York University’s MFA program, and holds degrees in wildlife and environmental sciences. Before becoming a filmmaker, she worked in community-based research in the Northwest Territories, and on studies chasing after the likes of terns and wolverines. She is the former director and programmer of the Yellowknife International Film Festival, and of a Cinema Politica chapter.