Instructors
PRODUCTION COMPONENT
MIYRAM CHARLES
Miryam Charles is a director, producer and director of photography living in Montreal. She has produced and photographed several short fiction films as well as feature films . She is also the director of several short films which have been presented in various festivals in Quebec and internationally. She is currently working on her first feature-length documentary Cette maison (Talents en vue, SODEC) on short fiction film Au crépuscule (SODEC créateurs émergents), a fantastic series X (Banff/Netflix Diversity of Voices + Trio Orange) as well as a feature-length fiction film Le marabout (La forge Québec cinéma/Netflix + Voyelles Films).
HANY OUICHOU
After studying philosophy and cinema, Hany Ouichou co-founded the company Art & Essai in 2012 with Mathieu Denis. There he produced more than 20 short films and 5 feature films including Mutants (Best Canadian Short Film at TIFF), Je finirai en prison (selected at Sundance, Clermont-Ferrand and Tempere festivals among others), Prank (selected at the Venice and Toronto festivals), Ceux qui font les révolutions à moitié n’ont fait que se creuser un tombeau ( selected at the Berlinale, Karlovy Vary, and elected Best Canadian Film at TIFF) and Les Barbares de la Malbaie. In 2016, he was recognized as Best Emerging Canadian Producer at the Toronto Film Festival for his “boldness and unique artistic vision.” Today, he holds the roles of artistic director and producer at the Coop Vidéo de Montréal.
RICHARD JEAN-BAPTISTE
After a diverse career including directing and producing documentaries, in 2008 Richard became a partner at Sid Lee; one of the biggest advertising agencies in Canada. Within these last 15 years, Richard founded and successfully led one of Sid Lee’s biggest child company; Jimmy Lee. Richard has produced more than fifty scripted and non-scripted projects including; The LibTv content channel, The Rams, The Chronicles of an Unworthy Mother, The Interns, Make Me a Tale, Éloize, Circus Story, Guantanamera Boxe and Takedown, The DNA of GSP. His productions have been seen in theaters across Canada as well as on CBC, Radio-Canada, TVA, Télé-Québec, TV5, HBO Canada and several festivals. Richard has several nominations and awards to his credit including Numix, Gémeaux, Cyber Lions of Cannes, Boomerang, Digital Marketing Awards and FWA. In 2021 Richard decided to leave the world of advertising to fully dedicate himself to his passions, television and cinema. The scarcity of diversity among experienced producers in Quebec and Canada is no stranger to Richard’s career decision. Richard brings his extensive and unique experience along a different diversity perspective on content produced in Canada.
MILA AUNG-THWIN
Mila Aung-Thwin is co-founder of Montreal’s EyeSteelFilm. Productions include Last Train Home (winner of 2 Emmy Awards); Up the Yangtze (Golden Horse Award winner); Rip: A Remix Manifesto (IDFA audience choice prize winner); and I Am the Blues (CSA winner). Most recently, he directed Let There Be Light (Big Sky Fest’s Artistic Vision winner) and co-edited Softie (Sundance Festival award for editing). He frequently mentors upcoming filmmakers – recent workshops include Guangzhou, China; Durban, South Africa; and Yangon, Myanmar.
NETWORK COMPONENT – REPRESENTATIVE ASSOCIATIONS
ROCÍO BARBA FUENTES
Trained at EICTV (Cuba) and L’inis, Spanish-born producer Rocío Barba Fuentes worked in the Caribbean before moving to Montreal, where she joined the production company Les Films Outsiders and cofounded Cosmos Films. With valuable international experience, she enjoys working with filmmakers with daring visions and underrepresented voices in both fiction and documentary.
SARAH MANNERING
Sarah completed her bachelor’s degree in film at the École des médias de l’UQAM in 2010. She then accumulated various work experiences in the film industry before co-founding her own company, Colonelle films, with her two sidekicks Fanny Drew and Geneviève Dulude-De Celles in 2012. Since its creation, the company has produced more than twenty films that have been shown in several international festivals such as Sundance, Locarno, Berlin, Rotterdam, TIFF, winning various awards such as Best International Short Film at Sundance (LA COUPE, 2014), the Crystal Bear at the Berlinale or the Best Film at the Canadian Screen Awards (UNE COLONIE, 2018) The producers of Colonelle films also won the Emerging Documentary Filmmakers Award at HOT DOCS 2018 as well as the Emerging Producers Award presented by the AQPM in 2019. Sarah has also attended various training courses such as the Rotterdam Producers Lab, Berlinale Talents, Cannes producers Network, Doc Accelerator Lab at Hot Docs and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Union des Producteurs et Productrices de Cinéma du Québec (UPPCQ).
ELLA COOPER
Ella Cooper is an award winning cultural leader, producer, facilitator, photo-video artist, educator and programmer based in Toronto. She has been working in the arts and culture sector for over 20 years. Her creative work explores the diaspora, the creation of positive representations of the Black body in Canada, new representations of motherhood, arts for social change, community storytelling, contemporary dance, children’s programming and hybrid identities through multi-racial feminist lens, across Canada, the US, Europe, the Caribbean and South Africa. She is also the founder of Black Women Film! Canada a new collective and leadership initiative supporting the development of Black women filmmakers that she created with support from TIFF, CBC, CFC, the Nia Centre for the Arts and 40 Black women filmmakers funded by numerous arts councils, donors and foundations. She is currently a writer for CBC Parents and has a children’s show in development for CBC Kids under her new production company Brown Rabbit Studios.
PITCH COMPONENT
RÉMI DUFRESNE
Although Rémi had earned a dual degree in Screenwriting and Creative Writing from l’Université de Montréal, it was his studies at L’inis that cemented his desire to become a screenwriter. Curious and sensitive by nature, Rémi enjoys building strange and fascinating worlds populated by larger-than-life but deeply human characters. After co-writing his first feature, Of Ink and Blood (2016), he dove into his love of genre cinema and wrote Plainsong (2019), an award-winning short film that has screened at 50 international festivals including Fantasia and SPASM. Equally invested in new media and interactive narratives, he participated in the 2020 edition of SODEC’s Atelier Grand Nord XR with Metamorphosis, a short immersive VR experience. He is currently writing his next two feature films, The Witch Across the Fence for a youth audience, and the thriller White Crash.
MORE INFORMATION
For any questions or additional information, please contact prisme@mainfilm.qc.ca