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 (fewer than 4 films) are eligible for this prize of post-production services, $5,000 value.

Air Canada Short Film or Video Award

All Canadian 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-T 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-T.

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.

Syrus Marcus Ware
Activist and artist

Syrus Marcus Ware is a Vanier scholar, visual artist, activist, curator and educator. Syrus uses painting, installation and performance to explore social justice frameworks and black activist culture. He is part of the Performance Disability Art Collective and a core-team member of Black Lives Matter – Toronto. 

Ursula Liang
Director, Down A Dark Stairwell

Ursula Liang is a journalist-turned-filmmaker. After working in print (ESPN The Magazine, T: The New York Times Magazine), she directed two critically-acclaimed feature documentaries, 9-Man and Down a Dark Stairwell. Ursula lives in the Bronx, N.Y.

J.M. Harper
Editor and co-writer, Down a Dark Stairwell

J.M. Harper is a documentarian. Down A Dark Stairwell is his third documentary feature as editor. He’s currently editing a feature documentary about Kanye West. His work has been featured on AdWeek, Vimeo Staff Picks, FADER and the Guggenheim.

Michelle Chang
Editor, Down a Dark Stairwell

Michelle Chang is a Brooklyn-based editor of documentary features as well as short form projects. Feature credits include When Claude Got Shot, Harbor From the Holocaust, 9-MAN, Like Any Other Kid, (A)Sexual, American Promise (Additional Editor for POV Broadcast, Emmy nomination). Before becoming an editor, Michelle was an associate producer for ABC News “20/20” and “Primetime.”

Liam Diaz
Cast as Bing

Liam Diaz is excited to be making his on-screen debut in his first movie role as Bing in Scarborough. He is an avid performer, and loves singing, dancing, and acting. He also enjoys expressing his artistic side through SFX makeup which he uses on his free time. His favourite stage role to date was playing the role of “young P.T Barnum” from the musical film, The Greatest Showman during the JDL Performing Arts summer showcase.

Ellie Posadas
Cast as Edna

Ellie Posadas is a Filipina-Canadian, Actor, Singer-Songwriter, and Creator from Toronto. She is a member of the award winning comedy group ‘Tita Collective’. Ellie is an alumni of Randolph Academy’s Musical Theatre program. She was featured in the 34th Torino Film Festival Official Selection, Wexford Plaza (CAAMfest, Slamdance) and is also featured in the short film The Morning After (Toronto Inside OUT Festival, Los Angeles OUT fest). Other selected Theatre/Film
credits include: Baby Blue Canoe (Wattpad productions), Tita Jokes (Tita Collective), The Penelopiad (Hart House), Emily & EV (Nöta Collective), Silenced (HERstory Counts), and Avenue Q (LOT).

Cherish Violet Blood
Cast as Marie

Cherish Violet Blood is an actor, storyteller, activist and Blackfoot woman hailing from the Blood reserve. Based in Toronto, Cherish is a professionally trained and seasoned performer with active followings in the national Indigenous and international theatre community. Cherish  has performed all over North America. Select credits include creator/performer in Material Witness (Spiderwoman Theatre La Mama,NYC), creator/performer in Making Treaty 7 directed by Michelle Thrush in Calgary, AB. The lead role in Deer Woman, a new play that has been touring internationally by Tara Beagan . As a natural comedian Cherish has hosted album release parties as well as community events and fundraisers.

Aliya Kanani
Cast as Ms. Hina

Aliya Kanani is a Toronto-based artist and creator, who has worn many hats, including those of comedian, actor, writer, director, producer and entertainer. She spent the better part of the last year touring internationally with her solo show, Where You From, From?, which sold out at the 2019 Just for Laughs Festival, 2019 Melbourne International Comedy Festival and 2020 World Fringe in Perth. In 2015, Aliya co-created, wrote and co-starred in the wacky sketch web series, Juicy. In addition, she has created, written, directed and produced various online sketches and short films, including It’s My Turn, and short doc, 36 Questions to Love, which she co-directed and co-produced.

Alexis Hancey
Cast as Fern

Alexis Hancey is a Toronto based actress & screenwriter, best known for her role as Narrator in a widely popular/CBC-covered performance of Threepenny Opera at Humber College. She stars as Susan in PG: Psycho Goreman, a feature described by Variety magazine as “blowing the roof off (drive ins) where there was no roof,” and is currently developing a web series in which she plays an HSP patient who wasn’t actually fixed by therapy.

Amar Wala
Moderator

Using his cinema to deconstruct notions of race and identity, Amar Wala has directed series for CBC, Viceland, and Shopify Studios. He directed the feature documentary The Secret Trial 5 and is currently director and consulting producer of CBC Arts series In The Making.