Emily Ryder is a Toronto-based writer and director who is passionate about telling stories that explore the complexity of intergenerational relationships through the lens of queer becoming and womanhood.

Zinnia Naqvi is a visual artist based in Toronto and Montreal whose work is based in documentary practice and uses a combination of photography, video, archival footage and installation.

Terril Calder is a Métis artist, born in Fort Frances, Ontario, Canada currently residing in Toronto. She attended The University of Manitoba's Fine Art Program as a Drawing major with a focus on Performance Art (with Sharen Alward) & Film Studies (with George Toles).

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Nadine Valcin is a filmmaker and media artist. She is currently an MFA candidate in the Digital Futures program at OCAD University as well as the Archive/Counter Archive artist-in-residence at Library and Archives Canada.

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Alicia K. Harris is CSA-winning filmmaker from Scarborough. She graduated from Ryerson University’s School of Image Arts, where her thesis film won Best Director and Best Production. Her films have been broadcast on CBC, TVO, and at numerous festivals. Alicia is dedicated to sharing the unique stories of Black women.

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Arlen Aguayo-Stewart is a Montreal-born and Toronto-based actor and creator. Date Night is her first stab at directing film. She has an eclectic background in film, theatre, dance, circus, and is fluent in five languages. Some of her acting credits include TAKEN (NBC), In Contempt (BET), On the Basis of Sex, and most notably her starring role in Roads in February that not only won Best First Feature at TIFF but also landed her a Vancouver Film Critics Circle award for Best Actress.

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Based out of Victoria, BC, Anik Desmarais-Spencer and Sonya Chwyl have been writing together since 2018. They have worked on numerous film sets as ADs, ACs, PAs, MUAs, and DITs, often as a creative team. Baby Teeth is their first film.

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Alexa Tremblay-Francoeur is native from the city of Québec, now residing in Saguenay. It is only near the end of her studies that she starts experimenting with hand-drawn animation, at first with Crayon Rose, Cheveux vert then with Déconstruction and finally with The Passage an official part of the selection of the festival Regard sur le Court-Métrage in 2016. In the same year she completed her baccalaureate in art at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi.

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A dyslexic 7w6 who does not know her sun sign from her moon sign, Chanelle Lajoie is continuously striving to align her ethics, principals, and goals better than she does her posture. As a Queer Métis Femme living on Treaty 1 Territory, community building is Chanelle's medicine. Rooting and weaving her academic studies, work, and creative passions closely alongside her personal politics aids in merging the communities that reside in each.

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Isabella Carrera is an emerging producer based in Toronto. Originally from Brazil, she has a background in Assistant Location Management for film and television. Since arriving in Canada, Isabella has focused on writing, directing and producing student short films, as well as working as a Production Assistant.

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Kourtney Jackson is a filmmaker from Toronto. She was the 2018 Emerging Director’s Spotlight winner at the Regent Park Film Festival, where she premiered her experimental short 1 vers[us] 1. Through film, she continues to explore the histories, nuances, and intersections in her ethnic, cultural, and spiritual identity. Wash Day is her second project.

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Emily Gagne and Joshua Korngut are filmmakers and the co-founders of Spooky B Films, a Toronto-based production company which aims to tells horror stories through a fun, feminist lens.

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After graduating from film studies, Marilyn Cooke is exploring the themes that fascinate her, including family relationships and dreams. She was a finalist in the screenwriting competition Sprint for Your Script.

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Born and raised in Calcutta, Tanvi Chowdhary earned her Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Film from the Srishti School of Art and Design in Bangalore, India. She has won various awards for her audio-visual and photographic works.

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Mahsa Razavi studied Sociology in Iran before moving to Canada where she earned her MFA in Film Production. She has made several short films that have been showcased in many festivals around the globe. Mahsa’s works often focus on issues of gender, identity politics and immigration experience.

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Artemis Anastasiadou is a versatile director from Greece, working across genres both on comedies and dramas. Her directorial work has been screened at SXSW, Austin Film Festival, Athens International FF, Oak Cliff FF, FilmFest Dresden, Cine Las Americas, Film Festival of Drama among others.

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A graduate from New York City’s 'Circle in the Square Theatre School', Elise Bauman is most widely known for her role in the popular Shaftesbury Film’s web series turned feature film Carmilla. Elise has recently begun directing and producing, with three music videos and a short film under her belt.

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Maya Annik Bedward is a filmmaker and Breakthroughs Alumni who is making the transition from short to feature-length films. Maya is a Jamaican-Québecoise filmmaker currently based in Toronto. After completing her MA in International Communications from the University of Leeds, she launched Third Culture Media with support from the Michaëlle Jean Foundation. Her films have screened at festivals across North America and Europe, and sold to Air Canada and the CBC.

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You can’t keep Jessica Hinkson down, nor do we want to. As the co-creater, executive producer, and co-star of the multi-award winning short film Jessica Jessica (winner of the Audience Choice Award at BFF 2018) Ms. Hinkson has had quite a successful run with her film and other incredible ventures. This month she sits down to talk to us and tell us all about the making of Jessica Jessica and what's in store for her next!

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The 2018 edition of TIFF has just gotten underway, and we couldn’t be more excited to see that its clear breakaway star is a young director who we happen to know and love. Jasmin Mozaffari, a BFF alum whose short film FIRECRACKERS screened at our fest in 2014, went on to direct a feature adaptation of her film, which is premiering at this year’s festival to unanimously rave reviews.

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We at Breakthroughs Film Festival are thrilled to introduce our brand-new Executive Director, Mariam Zaidi, who will lead us in championing the work of emerging women filmmakers. That is, and has been our mandate here at BFF for the last seven years, and we are just getting started.

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I recently sat down with Toronto-based director Lisa Rideout. I had just programmed her film Take A Walk on the Wildside for WIFT-T’s Showcase and was excited to meet the person behind the camera. Around the same time, she joined BFF as a panellist at our Breakthrough To Your Audience panel. With four films under her belt and a Canadian Screen Award for Wildside, I was curious to hear what motivations were behind her work, and what our BFFs might be able to learn from her experience. Here’s what she shared with me.

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By Hannah Donegan

Sarah Kolasky is a Toronto based award-winning actor, writer, producer and the former chair of the Breakthroughs Film Film Festival. Her first feature film, Great Great Great, is a dark comedy in which she starred, as well as produced and co-wrote with Adam Garnet Jones. Together they received a 2018 Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay for the film, which premiered at the 2017 Canadian Film Fest and won Best Feature, Best Screenplay, and Best Performance in a Feature (for Sarah Kolasky). The Globe and Mail selected it as one of the Top 10 Canadian Films of 2017. She also produced and acted in the short film, Liar, which premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, TX.

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There is a moment that I can remember where I sat, slumped in front of my laptop screen cursing the day I chose to become a filmmaker. The frustration of festival rejection letters, the continuous search for funding, heck even the accelerated flurry of social events that seem to be a prerequisite, had me feeling blue and uninspired.

It was on this day that a TIFF.net article entitled ‘Rejection is How You Become a Filmmaker’ was passed on to me by another aspiring screenwriter. It was written by Molly McGlynn, a first-time feature director and recent TIFF acceptee.

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I was introduced to Vivek Shraya’s work at my local library, the nerd-chic librarian gushing so hard over the trans artist’s work and style that I felt compelled to check her out. I picked up her latest novel, She Of The Mountains, idly wondering if it would live up to the hype. I had been going through a ‘break’ with my partner of almost three years and had been pleading with the heavens for some guidance, or a sign of what lay ahead. My salvation came in the form of Shraya’s alt-lit hybrid narrative, which gave me more than guidance, it gave me hope and reflection on the path that love winds around our collective hearts.

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Canadian actress-turned-director Nadia Litz has a clear passion for films and a sly sense of humor. Her work tends towards a dark surrealism but always with a sincere depth of being. Inspired by filmmakers such as Jim Jarmusch, David Lynch and Eric Rohmer, Litz is becoming known for her focus on female protagonists and her innovative casting – such as hiring Pamela Anderson to play the hardboiled model ‘Signe’ in her warmly received feature film ‘The People Garden’. Haunting and stylish, yet rooted in the reality of emotion, Litz’s films have gained her international attention and homegrown love.

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Erika Lust is a Stockholm-born, Barcelona-based filmmaker who writes and directs what she calls ‘ethical porn’. When you watch her films, you encounter people who are beautiful, simply because they are real people having real sex with one another. It’s explicit as they come, but also has a wicked sense of humour. Cinematically, Lust knows what she is doing. Many of her films have actors in a unique setting and bathed in gorgeous light.

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A feature documentary about the powerful allure of a universal myth, Ali Weinstein’s ‘Mermaids’ is set to premiere at Hot Docs on April 28. The film follows five women who actively participate in the growing ‘mermaiding’ subculture, finding empowerment through donning tails and letting their imaginations run free.

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Of Syrian and Palestinian descent, Montreal born Ruba Nadda is known for her strong female lead characters who often find themselves involved in subtle and complicated narratives. She's never shied away from issues of race and diversity, starting with her first feature ‘Sabah’, in which a Muslim woman falls in love with a Canadian – against her family’s wishes.

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