His videos have millions of views and have been shared by actors Jennifer Garner and Jennifer Love Hewitt. Now social media star Frank Moyo is one of 21 creatives selected for the Canada Media Fund’s Digital Creators Pilot Program. The singing teacher explains why he makes videos that teach kids Italian, and how the money may help take his content to the next level

Frank Moyo’s Italian roots run deep. His parents and grandparents immigrated from Calabria, in Southern Italy, to Canada in the early 1970s. Moyo was born in 1993 and grew up immersed in Italian culture and language. He was close to his grandparents, especially his maternal grandmother, whom he calls Nonna. “I was speaking Italian when I was a kid and grew up eating Italian,” he says. 

When he was 11, young Moyo developed an interest in music. “I saw a guitar in the window and asked my dad for it for Christmas,” he says. “It’s a cliché story, but it's true, I promise.” He started writing music and developed his skills as a singer-songwriter while studying Italian and archeology at the University of Toronto, followed by a stint at teachers’ college. 

Moyo has been a music teacher since 2018, working at two primary schools in Toronto. But it wasn’t until six years into his teaching career, around 2024, that he started merging three of his passions: music, teaching and Italian. He soon added a fourth passion to that list, content creation, posting as @frankmoyomusic to a million Instagram followers and as @FrankMoyo on YouTube.      

The Birth of a Digital Content Creator

While he’d sung in Italian before, mostly covers, Moyo was inspired by how some language teachers use beats to help with pronunciation. “I kind of did it based on rhythm,” he says, using the word “parmigiano” as an example. He breaks the word down by its syllables, then works it into a beat. “Then we put it to a song,” he explains.  

He treated learning Italian as an icebreaker for music students to do something new together. “They were less shy and less worried about judgment as they were all learning together,” Moyo says.

Moyo wrote what he calls “The Cheese Song” and sang it for a Grade 2 class, propping his phone up on a projector stand. He wanted to capture video of his performance and post it online so that more people could learn from it. It was one of the first Italian instruction songs he posted on his Instagram account, and it became a viral success.

“It got 15 million views within the first week or two,” he recalls. “It was reposted by Jennifer Garner and Jennifer Love Hewitt and all these huge A-list people. I think it was just something really brand new and no one else was doing anything like it.” 

Moyo’s Popularity Grows

Moyo continued to write Italian educational songs, singing them for his classes then uploading them online. First came “The Pasta Song,” then a song about how to express your love in Italian, along with songs about fruits, vegetables and colours. The songs were a hit in and outside of school. “The Buongiorno Song,” which introduced different Italian greetings, hit 12 million views. “Parents would come to school and say how much they loved the songs and how their kids were singing them all day and night,” Moyo says.  

Seeing the potential for his songs to become something more, Moyo made a shift from Instagram to YouTube. He worked with an editor to create videos and thumbnails reminiscent of popular educational channels like Ms. Rachel and Super Simple Songs.  

Then, another big breakthrough for Moyo — a song that he wrote about his nonna went viral, which led to an appearance on Canada’s Got Talent in April 2025. An illustrated children’s book called Nonna, written by Moyo, followed that May. “She’s an online celebrity in her own right,” Moyo says of his nonna. “She loves it.”  

Is There a Children’s Show in the Future?

While he’s still focused on creating educational Italian song videos for children, and still teaches full-time, Moyo hopes to develop a full-fledged children’s show one day. He’s starting to experiment with more advanced video features like performing in front of a green screen and has hired illustrators and animators to enhance the production value of his content.  

As one of 21 digital creators selected for the third edition of the Canada Media Fund’s Digital Creators Pilot Program, Moyo gets to share in the total $394,000 handed out this year. The program’s goal is to support the growth of mid-career Canadian digital content creators making short-form video content exclusively on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok or Facebook. The funding will help Moyo amp up the quality of his videos and grow his channel. “Eventually, down the road, I want to be doing full-on kids’ concerts,” Moyo says. “I really take a lot of inspiration from Robert Munsch and Raffi and what they've been able to accomplish with their careers.” 
 
As Moyo goes all-in with his educational children’s content, he admits he’s had to set aside his “adult” singer-songwriter interests. “I’ve kind of pinned myself as a kids’ musician now,” he says. “It’s difficult to get back to my original music, but I enjoy it. I love seeing the kids' faces.”  

A highlight of his career was a book signing at an Indigo store in the summer of 2025. “I saw so many families there with their kids and moms and dads and grandparents and granddaughters, all together, singing together,” Moyo recalls. “It was such an incredible experience, and it made me feel like I had a purpose.” 

While online educational content for kids is already overwhelmingly popular, Moyo sees this landscape growing even more in the future. “Every kid is basically holding an iPad now,” he says. “I think more resources and more funding is going to be put into what we’re doing.”  
 
He sees a future where school boards could invest in social media programs and use them as an educational resource. “Schools can have their own YouTube,” he says. “I think it's going to grow and, at the same time, bring us together even more.” 

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Filmmaker Michelle Mama has finally finished her documentary Antidiva: The Carole Pope Confessions, a long-overdue chronicle of the Rough Trade singer’s life and legacy as a lesbian icon. The film opens the Hot Docs Festival later this month.

It took six years for director Michelle Mama to complete her documentary on Carole Pope.  

Antidiva: The Carole Pope Confessions is a labour of love — a lesbian filmmaker capturing the life and times of Canada’s first openly lesbian rock star. It’s a captivating, moving and celebratory film that sheds light on an elusive figure. It will debut as the opening-night film at this month’s Hot Docs Festival.  

We spoke with Mama as she was gearing up for the film’s premiere, and delved into the challenges of capturing the life and times of a 79-year-old queer icon. 

How did the idea for a Carole Pope documentary come about?

It was 2020 during COVID. My friend Allison Grace and I met on a bench in Trinity Bellwoods Park in Toronto for a chitchat. I had gotten to know Carole socially through a friend and we had been saying, gosh, we can't believe there's no doc on Carole Pope yet. How is it possible? Allison would say, “You should make it,” and we’d laugh. And then finally, on that bench, she said, “You're making this film and I'm going to help you. We're going to produce it together.” And that's what happened.

Was it difficult to convince Carole to make the film?

No. Carole was ready. Carole was waiting for someone to do it. I think there were a few attempts previously, I don't know why they didn't work out. But it’s a story begging to be told. Here we have this 79-year-old — she'll be 80 in August — icon. She's here. She's vital. She's got all her marbles. She's still running around the world with her little carry-on bag to do little shows. I couldn't believe that no one had done it yet.

It’s one thing to get Carole on board, but was it difficult to get her to engage openly with you as a filmmaker?

Carole's got a reputation for a reason, like she doesn't suffer fools. I was very conscious of that. I was a straight shooter with her from day one. You can't play schmoozy games with her. You must be direct and that's what I was. She knew I was coming at this from the right place. It wasn't about money or exploitation. I mean, God knows Canadian docs are not a way to get rich. I was a queer woman standing in front of one of my idols, saying, “Why hasn't someone done right by you?” And I always feel like, you know, time's ticking, anything could happen at any time.

Carole played with sexuality and, with her hit song “High School Confidential,” she expressed pure lesbian lust that was groundbreaking. How important is that song to queer culture?

She inspired not just queers. In the last six years I’ve talked to mechanics on Vancouver Island, to construction guys on the East Coast. When they heard I was doing this film they’d freak out. The biggest surprise for me is how much straight men are obsessed with Carole Pope. It's so interesting because if you think about the era, any song, any nod to any kind of sexuality was going to do it for guys, right? They were like, you’re hot and you're talking about sex. On the radio!

The film pays tribute to this lesbian icon, but it’s also a meditation on the aging artist.

And a woman artist.

Yes. You show how hard Carole works to make a living and ply her trade.

My point was to do this cold open where it's Carole Pope, the bee’s knees, in her crappy little apartment in L.A. The contrast was the point. It was to say everybody who thinks Carole Pope is living high off the hog of “High School Confidential” is wrong. It could not be more untrue.

And this isn’t just a film about Carole. It’s the story of Carole and Kevan Staples, who formed Rough Trade back in 1968. Was it hard for Carole to talk about Kevan?

I would argue that Kevan, and the ballad of Kevan and Carole’s love story, is the beating heart of Rough Trade and the film. We had a whole version of the film that just wasn't cutting it. The film itself worked, but Carole wasn't being forthcoming. So, we had to do a final two-day mega interview where we went deep and I had to say to Carol, listen we're going there. It was uncomfortable, and in that interview she admitted maybe my songwriting wasn't as great without Kevan in the 1990s. It's just one line.  

It's a very revealing line.

Yes, for her to admit, maybe my best work was with Kevan, is what she was saying. Going solo maybe wasn't the greatest plan in retrospect.

Has Carole seen the film?

Carole has seen it, and she likes it. It was a very emotional time when she saw it because Kevan had just passed away. I had been racing to get the film to the hospital to have Kevan see it, and it just didn't happen. So, it was just this horrible time. I invited Marilyn, Kevan's wife, and Carole to both watch it together at our edit facility. The prevailing emotions were about Kevan at that time, and it was very, very emotional. Everyone was crying.

What do you hope audiences take away from the film?

You can look at this film like a prism, see it in completely different ways. It’s a long-lost hero film; people in Canada know who Carol Pope is. Straight men will watch it and love it. The baby gays will watch it and learn something and love it. 

And when we’re talking about pop culture, we’re talking about a flame that lights another flame that lights another flame. I just went to see Peaches a couple of weeks ago, and you can draw the direct line between Carole and Peaches, but then you've got all these new kids coming out 20 years after Peaches. It's a third generation of queer kids, where we've got Chappell Roan and Reneé Rapp. All these young, proud sapphic singers who are talking about women and loving women. And I just think, wow, here's a godmother of yours you can meet.  

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“I’m going to promote our culture, and that’s a promise!” Comedian Ariane Brunet, one of 21 creatives selected as part of the Canada Media Fund’s Digital Creators Pilot Program, talks about wearing many hats, and reaching her generation.

Comedian Ariane Brunet is one of 21 content creators who will share a total of $394,000 as part of the third edition of the Canada Media Fund’s (CMF) Digital Creators Pilot Program. 

Like all selected, this 23-year-old, Montreal-based francophone produces videos and shares them on social media — Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Facebook. In a funny sketch posted in March, for example, we see her buying an old, stained, and apparently smelly mattress from comedian Pier-Luc Funk. 

Brunet, who describes herself on Instagram as a “femme de blagues,” or “jokes lady,” has more than 120,000 followers on social media, an audience she expects will grow. The financial assistance from the CMF will help with that growth and support a new project — videos “that make people feel good” by addressing social themes in the form of funny sketches.

But that’s not all. 

“I’m working on a long YouTube video with my brother where we’re going to play music,” says Brunet. “These are videos that make people feel good. It’s really just that. I think the world needs to be entertained, and creators need support to be able to do it, even though we’ve been doing it for free for years.” 

A Team Effort

Brunet’s brother, Charles Brunet — who Ariane considers her best friend since childhood — is also a comedian. She began her career by working with him, both in front of and behind the camera, and they still collaborate, like in videos inspired by their Christmas together or a family vacation. “It’s really important for me to create spaces where I can work with people I like,” she says.  

Liking her collaborators is especially important since digital work is often solitary, and she considers herself a team player.  

Fortunately, for six months — from April to September 2027 — the CMF grant will enable her to add several creators to her team of one, including camera operators, directors of photography, film editors, sound engineers, writers and actors.  

Generalizing Generation Z

Brunet earns the bulk of her living as a TV content strategist. She isn’t planning to put her career on the back burner to become a full-time comedian. Instead, she prefers to wear several hats, including as a TV writer and an actor. Brunet also participated in the reality-TV series Big Brother: Le Piège (The Trap) in 2025. 

“Digital content creator” is one of the many hats she wears, but she doesn’t love the title. She thinks “content creation” is a catch-all term.

“It doesn’t really fit me,” she says. “I’m a comedian, and it just so happens my format is digital. I don’t really like that way of categorizing it, even if I understand that we sometimes need to explain things by putting them in boxes.” 

There are many ways to categorize her work. Brunet is part of the young Quebecois culture that avoids traditional media, and part of Generation Z, since she was born between 1995 and 2012. She laments that other generations think her life boils down to smartphones and the pandemic. She thinks generalizing a whole generation, her whole generation, is a form of snobbery.

“I can just be an artist,” Brunet says. 

“We wouldn’t say France Castel is a boomer, you know what I mean,” she adds, referring to the 81-year-old French-Canadian actor. 

Quebec Culture and Young People

Brunet has a lot to say about the traditional media available for her generation. 

In an October 2025 Instagram post she denounced the meagre offerings for young people in traditional media, especially on TV. She insists we need works by and for young people, and to make them accessible, having herself grown up watching a wide variety of comedy, including the sketch show Les Appendices, the satirical soap opera Le cœur a ses raisons (Sins of Love), and the educational comedy series Les pieds dans la marge. 

Brunet says people her age consume and produce Quebecois culture, but traditional media offerings are simply not sufficient or even interesting. 

“There’s only one show for young people, and if young people don’t watch it, they say, ‘Well, that’s it, we tried.’ The rest of the TV programs are geared towards an age group that’s not ours. And then they accuse us of going online. Yes, because there’s something there for us,” she says. 

With her CMF funding, Brunet wants to produce funny, accessible cultural commentary for all generations, as long as they know how to navigate a smartphone. Videos that make people feel good, “so the days don’t feel so long.” 

“I’m going to promote our culture, and that’s a promise,” she insists. 

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How an Edmonton production studio that creates Muslim-oriented entertainment for kids turned a story about the Silk Road from an e-book to a game, web series and full-length feature film.

In 2017, producer, writer and director Flordeliza Dayrit started writing Time Hoppers, a children’s e-book about the history of the Silk Road and the Islamic Golden Age. She was fascinated by the era, which spanned from the 8th to the 13th centuries, and knew she had something special on her hands. “It’s just never-ending history that’s sort of unknown,” Dayrit explains over the phone from Calgary, where she’s visiting her daughter.  

Dayrit was curious about the scientists of the Islamic Golden Age, in particular. There was Al-Khwarizmi, a mathematician born in 780 who is credited with popularizing algebra while travelling along the Silk Road. Astronomer Maryam al-Asturlabi also piqued Dayrit’s interest. Al-Asturlabi was born in 10th-century Syria and invented an instrument used to measure the altitude of celestial bodies above the horizon. Then there was Ibn Al-Haytham, who is known as a pioneer of optic science.  

“I would ask my friends, both Muslims and non-Muslims, ‘Do you know about the Silk Road and these people?’” Dayrit recalls. “Ninety-five percent of the time they had no idea what I was talking about.”  

The Expansion of Time Hoppers

It didn’t take long for Dayrit and Michael Milo, her husband and co-founder at both the Edmonton-based production company Milo Productions and Muslim Kids TV (muslimkids.tv) — a children’s entertainment platform for Muslim audiences — to envision a series and brand around Time Hoppers that would showcase the adventures of four time-travelling children, with their first stop being a trip back to the Islamic Golden Age.

“We saw the potential for something more,” Dayrit says. “History is so vast, so they could go anywhere, anytime.” 

The show’s lead characters are four students from a gifted school — Abdullah, Aysha, Khalid and Layla. They represent the diversity of Muslim cultures, including multiple hijab-wearing characters, Aysha among them.  

For Dayrit, working on Time Hoppers wasn’t just about creating a fun show for kids, it was about seeing herself represented on screen. “As an immigrant, I watched CBC before and after school and I thought it’d be nice to see someone like myself on that TV one day,” she says. “My goal has been to showcase stories that are relatable to my community.”  

They received funding from the CMF and Shaw Rocket Fund to create the Time Hoppers web series, which they began to develop while producing other programs for Muslim Kids TV.

Then, in 2021, Dayrit and Milo came across Canada Media Fund’s Innovation & Experimentation Program, which funds the development of interactive digital media, such as video games, and thought developing a game alongside the TV series would be a great way to build the brand. “We were able to really create the world,” Dayrit says. “We had the possibility of expanding it more.”  
 
They developed a game prototype and demoed it at schools and conferences like the Kidscreen Summit. “We saw incredible interest,” says Dayrit. “People would line up and wait for the whole day to play the game.”  

The game was released in 2024 and downloaded more than 100,000 times in three months.  

Pivoting From Series to Movie

Meanwhile, Dayrit, Milo and their team of animators and producers were busy working on their 13-episode series which, unfortunately, received a lukewarm reception from distributors. “The past years have been really tough,” Milo says. “Sales and interest of the different platforms and broadcasters has really dwindled. The only thing that they’re interested in is ancient IPs that are really risk-free. They weren’t interested in new ideas.” 

But based on the game’s positive reception, by the end of 2024 Milo and Dayrit had pivoted to creating a feature-length animated film, which would become Time Hoppers: The Silk Road. “The movie space is less crowded,” Milo explains. “We thought perhaps there’s a bigger appetite for an indie kids’ movie.”  

It took the animation team a year and a half to complete the film. “We had all the assets already, so we could repurpose them into a movie without an incredible amount of cost,” Milo explains.

The historical figures that fascinated Dayrit became characters in the film as the four students travelled back in time to prevent a villain from sabotaging the scientists’ discoveries. Milo Productions contributed their own money, and sought funds from private investors.  

Getting the Film to Theatres

Milo says they took a risk in pivoting to a movie, but it paid off. First, they received interest from Italia Film International, which distributes movies from Disney, Pixar and Marvel in the Middle East. On October 30, 2025, Time Hoppers had its Middle East premiere, including an Arabic-language version that screened in Saudi Arabia.  

That premiere was followed by a limited North American release on February 7 and 8, 2026. In the U.S., Fathom Entertainment screened the film in 660 theatres, while in Canada Landmark Cinemas showed it in 26 theatres, making Time Hoppers the first widely released children’s film by Muslim producers and creatives with a cast of predominantly Muslim characters. 

Cineplex is planning a small re-release in Canada to coincide with Eid celebrations after Ramadan later this month. There will also be a U.K. release in April, and plans are in the works for releases in Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia and South Asia. Vision Films will do post-theatrical distribution on TVOD and pay-per-view.  

Dayrit and Milo would love to get a major streamer interested, too. “We're hoping that in the digital space, that's where we'll be able to have a much broader general audience appreciate the movie,” Milo says. 

Meanwhile, Milo Productions is finishing the last two episodes of the Time Hoppers series this spring and summer, with a goal of releasing it in September 2026. Once that’s complete, it’ll be on to the next movie. Dayrit says there’s already demand for a Time Hoppers sequel, thanks in part to the film’s cliffhanger ending. “Everyone’s asking me, ‘When is the next movie coming out?’”  

She’s excited about the franchise’s potential. “This is an untapped market that we need to reach, and we know that we can do it right,” she says. “We’re confident that we can open up more markets and continue to do this work.”

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Content from Quebec has never had such a major presence, and been so highly anticipated, as it will be at this year’s edition of the prestigious Series Mania festival, which kicks off this week in France. Participants explain why the rest of the world is discovering our local savoir-faire.

There’s a strong wind blowing from Quebec that’s carrying our TV series around the world. 

French-speaking people in countries far and wide have never been so enthusiastic about Quebecois television series. Take Lille, France, for example, where Series Mania takes place annually, the most prestigious gathering dedicated to television series in the world. 

The 2026 edition — which takes place from March 20 to 27 — is welcoming the largest Quebecois delegation since the event’s creation in 2010, with some 120 members from our industry expected at the festival and its professional component.  

It’s a banner year for Quebecois productions, with four series being selected out of a total 51 shows in all languages from 16 countries at the festival: Les Saturnides (Saturniids) and Ayer’s Cliff are being presented in the Short Forms Competition, Bienvenue à Kingston-Falls (Welcome to Kingston-Falls) is making its global debut in the International Panorama program, and Vitrerie Joyal (The Glass House) will close the festival.  

By comparison, “a country like Spain is only presenting one series,” says François-Pier Pélinard Lambert, editor in chief of France’s entertainment magazine Le film français (French Film). Pélinard Lambert is responsible for choosing the festival’s selections from Quebec and says French producers’ enthusiasm for productions from the province is undeniable. 

Behind the Enthusiasm

Empathie’s success obviously played a part in this heightened enthusiasm. Florence Longpré’s acclaimed series about a sensitive psychiatrist surprised audiences when it was presented at Series Mania last year, receiving a 13-minute standing ovation, as well as the Prix du public (Audience Award). Pélinard Lambert remembers the screening well; he introduced the series that day and recalls that “the stage was electric.” 

“There was already a lot of interest in Quebecois series; it’s unfair to say nothing was happening before Empathie,” he says. “But something very specific happened here. The critics got excited, then the French film distributors got excited, and all wanted to buy the series, and then came popular success. We’re looking at something like 11 million views on Canal+, which got their hands on the series and co-produced Season 2, which is huge.” 

Also worth reading: The World Yearns for More Empathie

Pélinard Lambert says there are several factors behind Quebec’s increased presence across the ocean.  

For one, there are just more series being produced in Quebec, especially since Crave started running original francophone content. Long series are less common than short series, he notes, but the abundance of short series keeps more fresh content available. He also notes that Quebecois creators are more open than ever to the international market. “The great strength of the Quebecois people is in their North American logic; they’re here to do business,” he says. 

Originality is an Asset

So, what sets Quebecois TV apart and piques the curiosity of international producers?  

“Quebec series, quote unquote, have nothing to lose,” says Pélinard Lambert. “If their content doesn’t distinguish itself from everything coming from the United States, it doesn’t exist. So we see originality of subject matter, in addition to talented directors and consistently excellent performances from its actors.” 

“Originality” is a term you often hear in reference to Quebec series. It’s also the word co-producer Isabelle Thiffault uses to describe Bienvenue à Kingston-Falls, which has its global premiere at Series Mania before coming to Tou.tv’s Extra starting May 7. 

Also worth reading: Choosing the Right Festival

The police drama written, directed and co-produced by Robin Aubert follows Detective Gabriel Serpent (Maxime Le Flaguais) as he investigates a murder in a fictional Quebec village during an unspecified era. “Robin was inspired by all the archetypes and codes of police series, and he deconstructed them. The result is truly unique and extremely refreshing. Our series is different, there’s nothing else like it,” says Thiffault. 

The tone is also very quirky, a mix of suspense, mystery and dark humour. “Lots of humour, and a profound humanity,” says the producer who works with Encore Television, the production studio that is also behind Vitrerie Joyal, the new Martin Matte series coming to Prime Video. 

This mix of genres is, according to Thiffault, a strength of series from Quebec. “It’s a difficult balance to achieve, but when we do it, we do it well, even if we have far fewer resources than many other countries.” 

Doing Business

For professionals from Quebec’s TV industry, participating in either Series Mania or the Festival de la Fiction, which takes place in La Rochelle, France, in September, offers an essential opportunity to develop partnerships and tap into alternative financing models.  

“The fact of being here, of being chosen, is a unique opportunity to meet buyers and sell [our series] elsewhere, either as an adaptation or dubbed,” says Thiffault, citing Bête noire (Dark Soul) as an example. That series, also produced by Encore Television, received an offer less than 24 hours after being presented at Series Mania in 2021. A fourth season is currently in production.  

Neegan Trudel, producer and director of the web series Les Saturnides, sees his first festival appearance as a valuable calling card. “The global web series market is still weak when it comes to resales,” he says. “My hopes are more for what comes next. I would like to make important series, meet future financial partners or international co-producers. Or just start making myself known.” 

Les Saturnides, written by Jocelyn Martel-Thibault, is a drama that takes place in a single apartment and was inspired by the pandemic. It addresses our collective fatigue. “We ask the question, what would happen if an entire society was sleep-deprived? It’s an idea we’ve had for a while, but it evolved after COVID. We were inspired by the way the pandemic was managed, how the world interpreted a new virus, and the sort of media panic,” says Trudel. 

Produced by his company Oraquan Médias, located in the Wendake community in the province of Quebec, the psychological thriller follows Indigenous influencers. “We see them, from the start, saying they can’t sleep and asking what’s happening. We hear them, but we don’t take them seriously. It’s a nod to the fact that when the Indigenous communities speak out about something, we see them, but we often don’t act,” says Trudel, himself a member of the Wendat Nation. 

Even so, Les Saturnides isn’t an Indigenous series, he says. “It’s a direction we want to take, to get out of the silo of ‘only for the Indigenous.’ Telling our stories, but for a general audience.” 

His biggest wish for Series Mania? To introduce people to Oraquan Médias and for his web series to have another life outside of Canada after the festival. In Quebec, the series will be available this fall on TV5Unis. 

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The four women overseeing the Canada Media Fund, Telefilm Canada, the Indigenous Screen Office, and the National Film Board gathered to discuss the state of the nation’s media industry at Prime Time in Ottawa. Now & Next was there to capture their insights.

Call it the great Canadian media panel.

The four women who lead Canada’s national audiovisual organizations shared the stage at Prime Time 2026, a conference for the screen industry held in Ottawa every year.

The women — Canada Media Fund (CMF) president and CEO Valerie Creighton, Telefilm Canada executive director and CEO Julie Roy, Indigenous Screen Office (ISO) CEO Kerry Swanson, and National Film Board commissioner and chairperson Suzanne Guèvremont — gathered for a session titled “Canada’s Future: Building a Creative Nation.”

While the conference’s spotlight was dominated by men — including Prime Minister Mark Carney, and Heated Rivalry’s executive producers Jacob Tierney and Brendan Brady and star Hudson Williams — it is these four women who oversee Canada’s media industry.

It’s hard to overstate the impact they made in front of both Canadian and international creators as they discussed the state of Canada’s media industry, cultural sovereignty, and the future of the sector in this country.

“The most important thing the country has done is it’s opened the way for creators,” Creighton told the audience. “Regardless of the structure, regardless of the organizations, this country has allowed creativity to flourish. We have an abundance of creative and innovative talent. We're really blessed as a country.”

Defending Our Cultural Sovereignty

Supporting creators remains each organization’s focus, but suddenly a more urgent concern has emerged: cultural sovereignty. Creating meaningful films, TV and digital stories that represent the Canadian experience is crucial.

“The NFB is about telling authentic Canadian stories,” emphasized Guèvremont. “This is the strength of having creative documentarians and giving them the ability to tell their stories, which is important for our cultural sovereignty.

“And there’s education,” she continued. “That's another aspect of developing our cultural sovereignty and developing our ability to consume Canadian content from a very young age. For the NFB to be in schools across the country and have access to more than 400,000 teachers is important. We’re there with the kids in the classroom, and we participate in making sure that we develop that appetite for our amazing Canadian content.”

Roy spoke about how, over the years, Telefilm has built Canada’s brand internationally.

“That's very powerful and very strong,” she said. “We have treaties of co-production with 60 countries. That tells you Canada is appealing and people want to work with us.”

For the ISO, cultural sovereignty is seen through a very specific lens.

“The ISO was founded eight years ago with a mandate to foster narrative sovereignty for First Nations, Métis and Inuit storytellers in Canada,” explained Swanson. “And so that mandate is central to our mission. But what does it mean?

“Ultimately, it means the freedom to tell stories in the way that you want to tell them, to control those stories and not have anyone take them away from you, which we have a history of here in this country. But on a practical level, for us it means majority ownership of IP by Indigenous storytellers, with two of the three key creative roles on a project being occupied by an Indigenous person.

“And with Canada now going through this sort of crisis of contemplating what it means to be sovereign and feeling threatened, I think for the first time Canadians understand what we've been talking about this whole time,” continued Swanson. “And now you understand that you would also fight for 200 years to maintain your stories and to maintain your freedom and your sovereignty.”

Connecting With Audiences

Developing and bringing Canadian stories to screens won’t matter if those stories don’t resonate with audiences.

“I feel that if we don't invite audiences into the conversation, we will miss an opportunity here,” said Roy. “The environment has changed a lot and we can see that global platforms are shaping visibility, algorithms are shaping the discoverability, and even now AI is influencing the way we access content. So, what do we do with the audience? We need to build a national audience strategy.”

“The work we did together for MADE | NOUS across the country was about the audience,” Creighton offered in reference to the CMF’s years-long campaign to promote Canadian productions. “It was about our industry and our successes, but it really was about connecting with the public, and it's working pretty good, so far.

“If the creativity works, if the stories are strong, if the creators and producers are allowed to tell these stories, that's what will bring the audience in.”

Preparing for the Future Together

All four organizations are dealing with new technologies and services that don’t mesh with out-of-date structures and policies. Joining forces to ensure Canada’s media sector supports creators now and into the future is imperative.

“We cannot work alone anymore,” noted Roy. “We need to work in partnership, and I think that's the way we're going to build the future.”

“If we can help each other think together about what we can contribute to the future, it would be a very different approach,” said Creighton. "The first thing we have to do is learn how do we get more flexibility, how do we get rid of the barriers and the constraints? They were created a long time ago. Not the world we're living in today. And we see this in the interactive digital media, we see it in spaces like VR, we see it in spaces like gaming, we see it in spaces like location-based entertainment.

“It's just so exciting what's happening in this country,” Creighton added. “And I, for one, will do everything in my mental power to not hold on to the past and to look at how can we leverage that and make that leap? And it's not going to be easy, but it'll be fun.”

The post The Fantastic Four appeared first on Canada Media Fund.

For several years, extended reality (XR) documentaries have been offering immersive experiences by dropping audiences directly into stories via virtual or augmented reality. How is the genre faring today?

Traces: The Grief Processor, presented at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, last March and the Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM, based on its French acronym) in November, is an interactive documentary experience that uses location-based virtual reality (LBVR) to explore grief.

Before donning the virtual-reality headset, visitors are asked to contribute a written, visual or auditory memory connected to the loss of someone important to them. They then enter a virtual dreamlike forest in a small group, guided by director Vali Fugulin and actor Stéphane Crête, who also specializes in funeral rites. During the experience they can interact with the subject of their grief, then share a statement that is archived in the Traces universe.

“The frustration I’ve often felt [with immersive experiences] is that I’m dropped into something that’s happening right then and there, but it was conceived by someone else,” Fugulin explained at RIDM, where XR documentary filmmakers discussed the virtues and dangers of their field during a talk titled Memory in the Age of Digital Storytelling.

“As a documentary filmmaker, my personal obsession has become integrating reality into an experience that’s happening in real time. When creating Traces, I wanted people to be able to bring their own stories into my story,” she continued.

French filmmaker Emeline Courcier places her personal story at the heart of her work. In her video installation Burn From Absence, recently on display at Montreal’s Place des Arts and the PHI Studio, Courcier uses artificial intelligence to recreate memories of her deceased family after a relative in Vietnam burned all their family photos back in 1975.

Users hear real audio accounts while seeing AI-generated visual recreations of those memories. “Each person has their own perception of their experience; some memories contradict each other. In the end, it’s up to the viewer to decide if they are watching a work that is true or false,” Courcier said during the RIDM talk.

Accessing the Inaccessible

Ugo Arsac, a documentarian from Marseille, France, uses digital storytelling in a different way. He sees the medium as a way to let people access experiences that would generally be inaccessible to them.

One of his projects, IN-URBE, explores Paris’s labyrinth of underground sewers, crypts, tunnels and subways. Another, Girlfriend Experience, takes its audience into the brothels of Marseille. His project ENERGEIA, which was presented at RIDM, takes place in a virtual post-apocalyptic setting comprised of real French nuclear power plants.

“It’s a sort of experimental video game,” Arsac explained. “You walk around the interior of this 3D documentary. There’s no beginning, there’s no end. You enter when you want, you leave when you want.”

ENERGEIA participants meet experts who contradict each other on energy issues. “In all of my projects, I try not to give my view of things,” Arsac said. “I prefer to present people who offer varying positions. That gives the audience the opportunity to form their own opinion.”

The Risks of XR Documentary

Although he has decided to embrace the medium, Arsac recognizes that digital storytelling comes with risks. “Virtual reality has a different power than [traditional] documentary,” he explained. “A documentary remains in a cerebral place; we remember it in our minds. Virtual reality also creates a physical memory in the inner ear. The memory is located in a different place.”

Extended reality experiences can also provoke strong, sometimes unexpected, emotional reactions. “There’s a risk that the experience itself creates trauma,” Arsac said.

That’s why Courcier chose to abandon an immersive project on incest. “An immersive experience allows you to include the viewer by putting them in a position to confront a difficult experience. That said, who would want to be dropped into such a nightmarish experience?”

She wonders if that pursuit is even worthwhile. “What is a work of art if there’s no one to witness it, if there’s no one to share it with and create a dialogue? I find this type of physical and mental engagement a little risky [in the context of a story about incest].”

With Traces, Fugulin has seen the emotional power of the medium firsthand. “Even if we try to prepare people beforehand, we can’t completely control the emotional charge. There are people who have very strong reactions, even if we’ve done everything we can to mitigate them. It’s true that it can get away from us.”

The post The risks and rewards of XR documentary appeared first on Canada Media Fund.

Akashi premiered at the Vancouver International Film Festival earlier this year, where it won the audience award in the Northern Lights series. We talk with the film’s writer, director and star Mayumi Yoshida about making her feature-film directing debut with this very personal story.

“All my life, I’ve had this fear of forgetting,” says Mayumi Yoshida over a Zoom call. “There’s a part of me that’s scared of letting go and saying goodbye, but it's just the nature of life. We have to move on.”

The Vancouver-based actor, writer and director has always sought to remember and document the world around her. Now, she’s tapping into her own history for her powerful feature-film directing debut, Akashi, which premiered at the Vancouver International Film Festival in October, where it was named the audience favourite in the Northern Lights series. Akashi subsequently won Best First Feature at the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival and the Borsos Award for Best Canadian Feature at the Whistler Film Festival.

Loosely based on Yoshida’s own experiences, the autofictional story follows Kana (played by Yoshida), a Vancouver-based artist whose return to Japan for her grandmother’s funeral quickly transforms into an intimate journey through identity, love and loss. While navigating grief with her family, Kana uncovers a secret about her grandfather and simultaneously reignites a spark with her ex-boyfriend. The film’s dreamy effects blur the past and present as Kana’s current experiences, her childhood recollections and her grandparents’ past are all woven together as she grapples with the many definitions of love.

Yoshida has been working on this project for about 10 years — first as a play, then as a short film released in 2017, and now this feature film which received funding from Telefilm and the Canada Media Fund.

The film shifts between black and white for Kana’s present day, and rich, saturated colour for the scenes recalling Grandpa’s life. Why did you make that choice?

I wanted Kana's modern-day struggle to feel like a classical, timeless struggle. It’s actually [about the] crisis of identity and belonging and missed connections with people who may have been the person in your life. It might not seem so big compared to the [grandfather’s] decades-long love story, but when you're in it, it's such a big deal. By stripping down the visuals and the colours we’re more focused on the story. And I love how black-and-white cinematography, with its shapes and shadows, all reflect Kana’s fear, dread and unease. Modern-day Tokyo in black and white is also something that I wanted to show more because Japan is often heightened to the crazy, beautiful neon light and stimulation [rather than] the energy that keeps it grounded.

For Grandpa’s memories, I wanted to go into a saturated, magical-realism place because when we look back at days where we felt like it was the best time of our lives, it feels very vibrant, as if it's infused in nostalgia. We only have fragments of those memories, but we remember the sensation and relive these memories through his experience.

You use both symmetry and stillness in the film’s visual structure. Why?

I really like symmetry, but I also like when the camera is simply observing, because that's inspired by [Japanese directors] Ozu and Kore-eda. There's no forced movement from the camera, and we get to observe the character move around in the space. In that family home, you get to experience the absence of people and the presence of people. Even in the same space with different eras and different people, it just infuses so much different energy. And I think that's also the beauty of the passage of time. I wanted to represent how life just keeps going, you know? There's no way of stopping time, but there are some things you can hold onto, some things that'll be eternal, and some things you let go that just pass by. And that's okay.

The movie has beautiful textures, such as the patches on Kana’s coat. Were you using texture as a sensory replacement for colour?

I love fashion, so I felt like Kana, who is an artist, would have a clear taste in what she likes…. [Her] jacket is made out of six different denims, and it’s so heavy. Our incredible costume designer, Tammy Joe, had this great idea about making this jacket — what if we made this jacket out of all these pieces? Because [of] denim and its representation of Canada, but it's patched with different things because Kana is multidimensional, she is multicultural. There are so many aspects to her that are all stitched together.

This project went from play to short film to feature film over 10 years. How did Kana evolve in that time?

My character, Kana, did grow as I was growing as a filmmaker and as a woman. I first wrote the draft back in my early 30s, so the struggles and the concerns that I had at that time, versus when we were shooting in my mid-30s, were different. I kept updating Kana to where I was [in life], but when I was 35 I realized that I needed to stop Kana's growth and let her stay there. So that was really great to detach myself from the character as well.

What have you learned about yourself as a storyteller and artist?

Through writing and directing I realized I have a special perspective that I can bring to anything that I tell. The more I kept telling stories and taking [the film] to festivals and hearing audiences' responses, [the more] I realized that it's unique, and that’s a way to connect with so many other people. So that's really rewarding.

What new themes or projects might you be drawn to in the future?

I’m really drawn to intersectionality. I really love it because I think I live in the in-between space. I always loved to mix up different things and put them in a place where, seemingly, they're so different, but they're so similar. I love those kinds of themes. As of now, what I have in my mind is something that's set in Japan because of my heritage, but I'm always interested in themes like that where we're mixing different cultures, different generations and seeing it through the gaps.

The post Mayumi Yoshida’s Akashi captures love, memory and loss in a time capsule of Japanese-Canadian identity appeared first on Canada Media Fund.

The most popular video games in Canada aren’t shooters like Fortnite, open-world games like Grand Theft Auto, or sports simulations like NHL 26. They’re puzzle games like Wordle, Jeopardy! and Tetris. The trend comes as no surprise to developers.

A study published by the Entertainment Software Association of Canada (ESAC) in October 2025 shows that the most popular video games with Canadian players aged 16 and up are puzzle games like Tetris, Sudoku and Wordle.

According to the report, Power of Play, 59 percent of respondents reported that puzzle games was the genre they’d “played most regularly in the last year,” compared to 39 percent who said the same for action games and 30 percent for games of skill and chance. (Respondents were presented with a list of game categories and asked to select all genres they play regularly, which is why the total adds up to more than 100 percent.)

Puzzle games comprise a large range of sub-genres, including matching games (Candy Crush, Tetris), brainteasers and word games (Sudoku, Wordle), physics-based games (Angry Birds), educational games (ABCmouse), and trivia games (Jeopardy!).

A Needed Break

The trend doesn’t surprise Lukas Steinman, co-creator of the puzzle game A Little to the Left and co-founder of the Nova Scotia game studio Max Inferno Games. Steinman says this type of game serves as a counterpoint to players’ frenetic media landscapes and busy schedules.

“Puzzles allow us to slow down, focus on a single task at hand, and feel that pang of pride and success when a solution is found,” he says.

Mark Rogers, co-creator of the online word game Canuckle, which offers a free, daily, typically Canadian word for players to guess (similar to The New York Times’ Wordle), agrees. “Players crave something they can finish quickly — a single, intentional task instead of an endless scroll,” he says.

More than 230 million games of Canuckle have been played since it launched in February 2022, with approximately 50,000 players — mostly Canadian — playing it every day. For Rogers, daily word games like Canuckle have largely become “part of modern, digital self-care.”

Mobile Devices Behind Puzzle Games’ Popularity

Puzzle games also owe their popularity to mobile devices, according to Jason Kapalka, founder of the B.C.-based studio Blue Wizard Digital.

“Mobile devices are more suited to puzzle games than they are to, for example, first-person shooter games,” he says. Kapalka also co-founded the PopCap Games studio back in 2000 and has experienced this transition firsthand over the years as PopCap released games like Bejeweled and Plants vs. Zombies across various platforms.

The market also follows demographic changes, and gamers are getting older.

“Now we see players who are entering retirement, who are looking for games to play. People who enter retirement at this stage don't want Twitch-based games, shooting games, competitive games. They want stimulating games, social games, games they can play with their family,” says Carina Kom, co-founder of the independent studio Simply Sweet Games, whose first release, the word-puzzle game Criss Cross Castle, launched recently.

The genre’s popularity with women is also significant. “More than half of all gamers are women, and 75 percent of the players playing puzzle games are women,” says Tina Merry, CEO of Simply Sweet Games.

The Appeal for Small Studios

Puzzle games often represent an attractive option for independent studios. “They're relatively easy to make…and often don't have the same sort of art/audio requirements. They also have very low technical requirements most of the time, which means that they are able to be played by even low-spec devices, and would reach a wider audience than traditional video games can,” said Steinman.

Steinman’s game, A Little to the Left, has sold 2.5 million copies, and its downloadable content has been purchased 1.5 million times. According to Steinman, the game has made “a good return on investment.”

“Puzzle games punch way above their weight,” says Rogers. “A small creative idea, executed well, can connect people around the world.”

What’s more, puzzle games have room for innovation. New games are emerging like Slayaway Camp 2, which blends puzzles with horror, and markets itself on Steam as the “most violentest” puzzle game of all time.

Even if they are easier to design, developing a game is still a challenge.

“We went into this genre because we thought it would be easy, and we were wrong,” says Merry. “We were so wrong. Anytime you make a new game or any new IP with a new team and new technology, that is going to be hard.”

That doesn’t mean puzzle games aren’t a good opportunity; the market is evaluated at $30 billion (U.S.) worldwide, according to data compiled by Simply Sweet Games.

“All you need is to find a small portion of the market that is looking for what you have to offer,” says Merry.

The post The golden age of puzzle games appeared first on Canada Media Fund.

We talk with the filmmaker about building a DIY release for her micro-budget debut feature, Dinner with Friends, creator leverage, and what self-distribution can unlock for emerging producers.

Writer, director and producer Sasha Leigh Henry knows you don’t need a huge budget to make something that matters.

In the wake of low-budget Canadian hits like Heated Rivalry and Paying for It, and the success of American Youtuber Markiplier’s debut film Iron Lung — which made more than $40 million (U.S.) on a $3 million budget — the idea of a filmmaker building their own audience, even self-releasing, has never been more relevant.

Henry’s last project, the TV series Bria Mack Gets a Life, was cancelled after one season despite winning the Canadian Screen Award for Best Comedy Series. So she was open to a different approach when making her debut feature, Dinner With Friends, about eight longtime friends in their 30s who attend regularly scheduled dinners in an attempt to stay close.

Pitched on a $100,000 micro-budget, the film premiered at TIFF, then played the festival circuit, before Henry and her co-writer/partner at Everyday, People Art + Film Productions, Tania Thompson, went direct to viewers by selling the film on their Patreon, and subsequently made a deal with Filmhub to bring the movie to additional audiences starting this month.

Bria Mack Gets a Life was cancelled after one season despite winning the Canadian Screen Award for Best Comedy Series. What problem were you trying to solve by making Dinner With Friends on a micro-budget?

First, it was creative fulfillment. The blessing and the curse of making Bria is that you could argue we hit it out of the park right out the gate, but it took four years before anyone beyond the people who worked on it and greenlit it actually saw it. That’s a long time as an artist to not be talking to an audience.

After Bria did so well critically, I was getting more television opportunities because the industry wants you to do the thing they’ve seen you do already. I have range in the kinds of stories I want to tell, and I couldn’t stomach waiting another three to four years before you’d hear anything from me again.

Dinner With Friends was the scalable project we wrote to keep in our pocket so that funding decisions would not make or break us.

The film has been framed as a $100,000 micro-budget feature, but you’ve said the final budget was closer to $200,000. Can you clarify?

We went to camera with only $100,000. We could have finished a version of the film very close to what we have for that $100,000. That’s why we led with it, because that was the bet most cast and crew were taking.

We applied for Telefilm Talent to Watch and said, if we get it, then great, our budget’s $350,000. If we don’t, we’re still making this for $100,000 and we’re going to finish it with $100,000. We already had the $100,000 beforehand between personal investment, Canada Council for the Arts and Ontario Arts Council. We did it that way because the whole point was not waiting again.

You didn’t get Talent to Watch, but you did get an additional $100,000 from Telefilm. How was that money used?

It largely went to post. It also meant we could pay some people much closer to their real rates instead of asking them to work for an honorarium with the promise of a bonus later. It also went to troubleshooting because we didn’t have a post supervisor and some things were more finicky than expected. Music was a big one too. Music alone can eat up a good 30 or 40 percent of $100,000.

You shot in just nine days. How did you keep on track?

Preparation and honesty. I think we push this myth of the staunch visionary director who refuses to compromise. On a $100,000 film, that approach will burn people out.

As a producer-director, the promise I made to the crew was that it would be challenging but not miserable, ambitious but achievable. It’s unfair at this budget level to lay out your vision, have experienced department heads tell you it can’t be pulled off for these reasons, then tell them to figure it out. If I can’t provide the resources to do what I’m asking, it’s my responsibility to adjust.

Did any of the production constraints shape the film in a way that actually made it better?

For me that’s the job of the director, figuring out how to visually tell it in a way that feels congruent with who these people are. I love this kind of movie. I love a good dinner scene.

What helped us was leaning into constraints and letting them push the creative. It’s seven dinners with a lot of the same people. So we asked, how does each dinner have its own feel and weight? What is the function of each dinner? How can we play with the camera tools we have to elevate that?

There’s one dinner sequence where the inspiration is That ’70s Show’s weed circle, but we flipped the energy. You’re seeing the group, but in isolated ways, as they start to fracture. It gives new tension to a familiar device.

When did TIFF become the target?

TIFF was a goal, but it wasn’t make or break at first. TIFF’s deadline is in May, which lines up well with a Canadian post schedule where winter is often used for editing. It gave us runway to see how far we could get and assess what we had.

By April…I felt like we had a real shot and that it fit TIFF’s language, what they like to champion. We doubled down then.

After TIFF, many filmmakers would chase a traditional distributor. You’re a filmmaker with a track record and clout, yet you chose a DIY route. Why?

We didn’t think we’d get an offer that made sense. One of the best things about making a film at this budget is that we don’t really have debt, so we’re not forced into a deal. If someone offers $20,000, and you can’t trust what the lifeline of the film will look like, that’s not compelling. We already did our trailer and a lot of our poster design in-house.

If we were going to end up not making much money anyway, having direct understanding of the data and our audience had real value, even if it taught us what doesn’t work.

What’s next for the film, and for your production company Everyday, People?

We’re building the Everyday, People ecosystem and continuing to be strategic about the film’s release. We’re working with Filmhub, so the film is going to transactional video-on-demand in February…in the U.S. and other territories. We’re also looking at subscription and ad-supported options.

Creatively, we’re writing a YA action thriller, and a two-hander romantic dramedy about an artist couple who broke up years ago and run into each other on a tourist excursion in Japan. They’re not micro-budget, but they’re still low budget by industry standards. As you move into the millions, you’re talking about investors who want to see a return. So a big focus this year is understanding film as a product in a marketplace, not only a creative entity. Part of the goal with Dinner With Friends is to learn enough to answer, credibly, how you get someone their money back. That’s where we’re headed.

The post Sasha Leigh Henry is done waiting for permission appeared first on Canada Media Fund.

Heated Rivalry’s creators Jacob Tierney and Brendan Brady, along with stars Hudson Williams and Sophie Nélisse, share behind-the-scenes moments about the making of the hit show

Heated Rivalry’s success is simply staggering – it’s safe to say this is a tad surprising.

A sexually suggestive series about two queer hockey stars hooking up and falling in love had never been seen before, but that’s exactly why writer/director/producer Jacob Tierney and his producing partner Brendan Brady decided it had to be made.

Also worth reading: They Shoot, They Score

It felt authentic to Tierney, a veteran of Canada’s television and film industry who also happens to be a gay man who loves hockey.

“It’s my algorithm,” says Tierney during a panel in Ottawa at last month’s Prime Time conference hosted by the Canadian Media Producers Association. Tierney was onstage with long-time friend and co-producer Brady, who both created Accent Aigu Entertainment a few years ago.

The duo are speaking to a receptive audience of Canadian and international creators eager to hear how they managed the seemingly impossible – create a worldwide megahit.

Not only has it become Crave’s most-watched original series, but it’s also a global streaming juggernaut. Audiences around the world have spent millions of minutes (the number is creeping towards a billion!) viewing the show. It’s a massive hit on HBO Max and it’s topped the charts in Australia, the Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan. Its stars, Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie, are social media superstars and by the summer you’ll be hearing “I’m coming to the cottage” on repeat.

But what we hear is not about replicating that level of success; instead, we get a glimpse into their work ethos that can serve as a roadmap to other creators looking to make high-quality, salable productions.

IP IS EVERYTHING

It begins with the story, or in Heated Rivalry’s case, intellectual property (IP).

“Brendan and I had just started our company and we were very aware that the game is IP,” says Tierney. “Everybody wants IP, but how does a nascent production company with no money acquire IP?

“The kind of IP that producers like Brendan and I could get in that moment is IP that nobody else is going for. And there's fucking loads of it, because you have to look at marginalized communities that are not being represented in mainstream entertainment.

“So, I called Brendan and said I think we should option this book, and by this book, I mean these books, because there's a lot of them. And then I followed Rachel Reid, the author on Instagram, and she followed me back. I slid into her DMs, and I was like, ‘What’s up, girl,’ and the rest is history,” he says with a laugh.

“We then came in with a vision of how we can get it done,” adds Brady. “And it speaks to what we think is a way in which our business could help with the costs of making TV. We're going to do this crazy thing where we shoot all six episodes in just one block with one director, one writer, treat it like a movie and keep the cost down that way.”

Bell Media, Sphere Abacus and the CMF stepped up with major funding. “That [funding] system is what keeps Canadian television alive,” says Tierney. “And a show like Heated Rivalry, which was not an obvious bet for anybody, we would absolutely not be here without them.”

CLOCKING OUT

The checklist so far reads: find a solid IP, do intensive pre-production planning, enlist the help of funders who get what you are doing and finally treat the cast and crew with respect by adhering to reasonable work hours.

“We shot this show in 36 days, primarily on 10-hour shoot days. I'm not going to say every day was a 10-hour shoot day,” Brady says. “For us, that's one of the core principles of what I think our business needs to kind of change fundamentally, is to get away from these ridiculously long hours.

“My wife is an assistant costume designer, and she's five months pregnant. And she can't come to set and work 15 hours when she's pregnant. Or she can't do it when we have a kid. So, we need to stop these insane hours that we have.

“Also, from a financial perspective it makes so much more sense,” continues Brady. “Because when you shoot 10 hours, assuming you go into 12, 13 hours a day, you're paying for an additional day. People don't remember that. And I get that gear is expensive, and I get that putting people up in hotels is expensive. But in this country, we're never going to be able to compete with the budgets of the U.S. But what we can compete with is an environment that people actually want to show up and work in.”

CHOOSING LOVE

Later that night, Tierney, Brady and Heated Rivalry actors Hudson Williams and Sophie Nélisse reunited for a surprise behind-the-scenes event that also welcomed special guest Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. Like almost everything associated with Heated Rivalry, their red-carpet arrivals went viral.

Hosted by Lainey Lui, the evening allowed the cast and producers to reminisce about making the show, and it was especially moving when Williams and Nélisse watched a clip from his “first coming out” – the restaurant scene in which Rose gently prods Shane about his sexuality.

Nélisse gives a tender, nuanced performance.

“I really thought about how support can be so quiet,” she explains. “And I really wanted the scene to have this sort of stillness. I mean there was a lot in the eye contact and these pauses. I think Rose shows that one of the most generous things you can do for someone is to let them process their feelings without any sort of judgement or commentary. I just wanted her to be that safe space for Shane, for him to be able to open up, but at the same time showing him unconditional love.”

“I remember thinking she was the best person I would want there, across from me, doing this scene,” remembers Williams. “It was very easy to open up. Emoting and having to get vulnerable is hard especially because I think that was our second day, we hadn’t known each other for very long, but instantly I was able to open up.

“I even remember the rehearsal we did right before we got into it, we went off script. We were spitballing and I think the crew had zero faith that we’d have emotion or vulnerability and then we came and instantly the floodgates opened. It was great.”

“They were both amazing in this scene,” says Tierney. “It’s an extraordinary scene and I am so grateful to both of you and I am also super grateful to my editor Véronique Barbe who chose moments I would not have chosen. It was so interesting to watch the scene through her eyes. I basically left her cut in because it surprised me so much and because it revealed things to me that I didn’t expect.”

“Really, Jacob’s writing in this scene is a testament to love,” concludes Brady. “At every moment, the choice is love, and that’s what people are resonating with. That’s what we resonated with throughout this whole experience.”

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To celebrate Valentine’s Day we talk with Nuisance Bear co-directors Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman, who just won the Grand Jury Prize in the U.S. Documentary competition at the Sundance Film Festival, about falling in love in Churchill, Manitoba, and the joys and challenges of working with your spouse.

Love means never having to say you’re sorry.

Unless you’re a couple working on a film set.

Navigating any relationship is tricky, but when two creatives join forces professionally it can be especially fraught. Creative differences can follow you home and the boundary between work colleague and life partner may blur.

Yet, all those challenges can also fuel a relationship, strengthening a bond forged by creativity.

That bond defines Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman, the filmmaking couple behind the acclaimed documentary Nuisance Bear, which had its world premiere at last month’s Sundance Film Festival and won the Grand Jury Prize in the prestigious festival’s U.S. Documentary competition.

Based on the duo’s 2021 short film of the same name, which you can watch here, the feature-length documentary takes the point of view of a polar bear declared a nuisance in Churchill, Manitoba, tagged as Canada’s polar bear capital. The documentary asks the question, who is the nuisance in this landscape — bear or human? The story culminates when the film’s Inuit narrator and bear come together.

Falling For Each Other, and the Subject Matter

The film has been a labour of love for Vanden and Weisman, who met 10 years ago while studying film at York University.

“We met in third or fourth year and were on again, off again. Then as part of a student project we ended up in Churchill together and the rest is history,” says Weisman.

“When we were there, we realized we could really rely on each other and we just kinda fell in love, both with the subject matter and also each other,” adds Vanden.

The pair continued to visit Churchill over the next decade realizing there was a story to be told about the bear-human connection. In all, they logged 250 days of shooting, accumulating 700 hours of footage. The 2021 short was a hit with audiences and was shortlisted for an Oscar nomination. That success fuelled their belief that a feature documentary would resonate with viewers.

Working Together, Acknowledging Differences

Chatting over Zoom from their Toronto home a few days before heading to Sundance, Vanden and Weisman are relaxed. While they don’t finish each other’s sentences, they are in sync and the conversation between them flows naturally.

One wonders if they were always in sync while shooting?

“There was definitely tension at points and there was definitely fighting ’cause you can’t avoid it,” says Vanden. “But Jack and I are both really good at conflict resolution because we care about each other and we recognize we are on the same team even when we creatively butt heads.

“Part of the structure of the film is that it takes place in two towns,” she continues, “so for a lot of it we were separate. So sometimes we’d fight about a creative choice and I’d say, ‘Well, you’re not here so I am going to do what I want,’” she says, smiling.

“And it was the right choice!” exclaims Weisman. “That moment is one of the greatest things in the whole movie because of that choice. So, you have to trust the other person, although it’s hard to always trust, especially since we both have a particular way of doing things. We don’t see the world the same way. It gives us more of a 360-degree picture if you can get past the friction it causes.”

“We are very different people,” adds Vanden. “Yet we have common goals, common morals and common ideas of what we want out of life. But we bring different things to the table. Celebrating our differences, coming together and listening to each other is really important. It’s not always easy.”

Weathering the Storms

For the most part, filmmaking couples spend more time at home than on a set. That’s where discussions, planning and differences of opinions arise.

“We are 10 years into the relationship, and the working relationship, and so we had to learn over time,” explains Vanden. “I had to get to a point where I’d say, ‘It’s bedtime, I don’t wanna keep talking about this!’ [Both laugh.] Jack is so dogged when he has an interest.”

“It’s like an addiction,” he admits. “There weren’t enough boundaries, if we are being honest, in the relationship. We’ve almost split up at times because it has become so difficult. But we managed to make it through to the other side and there’s obviously a great reward to that. I’m so glad we did it together.”

Wiseman grew up in Ithaca, New York, before moving to Canada and becoming a Canadian citizen. Vanden is an Ottawa native, the daughter of a Canadian mother and Venezuelan father. They both cut their teeth working as cinematographers, and visual storytelling remains Vanden’s first love.

She imagines working on fiction films in the future but says the time spent making Nuisance Bear was a masterclass in filmmaking.

“Documentary is the best education for filmmaking and storytelling, especially as a cameraperson,” she says. “It just really hones your skills. It is so foundational to the way I am creatively. I think all filmmakers, at some point, should do some form of documentary.”

“We haven’t talked about doing another film together after this,” says Wiseman. “This is going to be a crazy year and we’re thankful for that. But it’s been nonstop for five years now. The short took off more than we could have imagined and there was almost 18 months of travelling with that. And then we went straight into production on the feature, and now we have another year to 18 months supporting this film. So, for me, it’s just going to be about slowing down a bit.”

What is their final piece of advice for other couples who plan to work together?

“Don’t be too hard on each other,” says Wiseman.

“Exactly,” echoes Vanden. “I also think it’s important for any relationship, even if you are not necessarily working together on a creative project, your life together has to be a project where you both have the same goals coming out of it. So, because we want the same things out of our lives, out of our careers, out of this project, we were able to weather all the storms.”

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