Awards Ceremony

Lainey Lui

Co-host of CTV’s THE SOCIAL, ETALK anchor, and scribe of the immensely popular celebrity gossip blog, LaineyGossip.com, Lainey Lui does what she does for one reason – to provide a gossip education to the Canadian public. Lui is regularly called upon as a celebrity expert by media outlets worldwide and has covered The Oscars, The Golden Globes, The Olympics, and Royal weddings.

Angela Sun

Angela Sun is a mad, fat, first generation/ settler theatre performer, creator, producer, arts administrator, and writer of Chinese descent. She has previously performed in or co-created works for Koffler.Digital (Koffler Centre of the Arts), The Bentway, the Gardiner Museum, and the Art Gallery of Ontario; as well as the Toronto Fringe Festival, the Hamilton Fringe Festival, SummerWorks Performance Festival, Paprika Festival, and the InspiraTO Festival.

Osler Best Feature Film Award

All feature works are eligible for this prize. $,1500 cash prize.

CineSend Best First Feature Award

All first feature films are eligible for this prize. $1,000 cash prize.

The Truth to Power Award

All documentary films are eligible for this $1,250 cash prize, donated by Karla Bobadilla, Diang Iu, Immanuel Lanzaderas, Sonia Sakamoto-Jog and Victoria Shen.

Change Connect Award

All films made by 30 & under artists are eligible for this prize. $500 cash prize.

National Film Board of Canada Best Canadian Short Film Award (Emerging)

All short works made by emerging Canadian artist (with credits fewer than 4 films) are eligible for this prize of post-production services, $5,000 value.

Air Canada Short Film or Video Award

All short films and videos are eligible for this prize. Opportunity to broadcast on Air Canada’s in-flight entertainment screens on international flights.

Animasian Award

All animated works are eligible for this prize. $600 cash prize.

WIFT Toronto Film Award

All films made by female-identified Ontario-based artists are eligible for this prize. $500 in programming gift certificates and one-year membership to WIFT Toronto.

Carrianne Leung

Carrianne Leung is a fiction writer and educator. Her debut novel, The Wondrous Woo was shortlisted for the 2014 Toronto Book Awards. Her collection stories, That Time I Loved You was named one of CBC’s Best Books of 2018.She is currently working on a new novel, titled The After.

Melissa Bisagni

Melissa Bisagni is the Media Initiatives Program Manager at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), in Washington, DC. She was previously the Director of Programming for the DC Asian Pacific American Film Festival where she is a senior advisor. 

Danis Goulet

Danis Goulet is a writer and director. Her films have screened at Berlin, Sundance and the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). She is a former programmer for TIFF and a former director of the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival. Her debut feature NIGHT RAIDERS is currently in post production.

Mandeq Hassan

Mandeq Hassan has spent years working extensively in the film industry. Hassan has been a key member of the Toronto-based distribution company Sisterhood Media and her credits include popular works Gay Mean Girls and The Regent Park Project. She received the 2019 Director’s Guild of Canada New Visions Award.

Ammar Keshodia

Ammar Keshodia is a filmmaker and curator. He has worked on the programming teams for festivals such as TIFF, SXSW, and Overlook. In 2019, he served as the Lead Programmer at Reelworld Film Festival. He has written for publications such as Bright Wall/Dark Room, NANG Magazine, and Peephole Journal.

Fransiska Prihadi

Fransiska Prihadi is an architect, co-founder of art-house cinema MASH Denpasar and has been the program director of Minikino Film Week, Bali International Short Film Festival since 2015. She is now working on her research thesis about international short film festivals for her Master of Tourism Studies at Udayana University.