Talent

Aaron Yeung is an award-winning writer and producer from Toronto. Specializing in dramatic fiction feature film writing, he has always been fascinated by the potential of genre storytelling, particularly the intersection of speculative fiction and intimate dramas in unlocking and expressing otherwise inaccessible truths.

Always looking forward to new avenues of storytelling, Aaron has worked across various forms of media, including VR, podcasting, graphic novels, film criticism, short stories, and game design. Projects he has been involved with have premiered at festivals around the world including Cannes, the Berlin International Film Festival, and TIFF. Recently, he has been a recipient of the CMF Program for Racialized Communities and the Telefilm Feature Film Fund Development Program.

When not writing, Aaron spends his days producing music, petting animals he meets in the street, watching pro wrestling, and pretending he doesn’t know anything about time travel.

Aïcha Morin-Baldé is an emerging filmmaker from Montréal. Rooted in her Québécois and Guinean heritage, her work explores modern Afro-Québécois identity and the complexities of navigating these two worlds. She creates projects that highlight human intersectionality, striving for inclusive representation in Canadian media.

Following her studies, Aïcha directed the films Noeuds (MIBFF '21, TBFF '21, NYTIFF '22, Massimadi '23) and Nourrir Les Rêves (Hot Docs '22, RDVQC '22), before joining the series Afro Canada as second-unit director (nominated at the 38th Prix Gémeaux). Her projects address systemic racism, misogyny, immigration, beauty standards, consent, and self-esteem as a Black woman. In 2024, Aïcha was awarded the Jean-Marc Vallée Startup Grant. She defines herself as an Afro-feminist, and is part of the LGBTQIA+ community.

Andrea Bang is a writer/actor from Vancouver, B.C. She is most well-known for her role as Janet on CBC’s award-winning show, Kim’s Convenience. Other acting credits include the films Float, Fresh, Luce, Stay the Night, and ABC’s A Million Little Things.

As a writer, Andrea has written several short films, including Idols Never Die, which she co-wrote, and was part of Telefilm’s Not Short on Talent initiative at Cannes. She was also selected as a participant of the Netflix-BANFF Diversity of Voices initiative in 2019. No matter the genre, Andrea enjoys infusing her stories with some comedy, whether that’s “comedy” with an upper case, lower case, or barely there “c”.

Ashley Qilavaq-Savard is an Inuk poet, writer, artist, and filmmaker born and raised in Iqaluit, Nunavut. Ashley attended Vancouver Film School for acting essentials, but joined script writing through an opportunity with the International Sami Film Institute in Norway, where she wrote and directed her first short horror film titled Reclaim. Reclaim has screened at multiple festivals and won the Young Filmmaker Award at the Latino and Native American Film Festival in 2024.

Ashley is the first writer from Northern Canada to participate in the WBD Access x Canadian Academy Writers Program.

Brandon Hackett is a Canadian Screen Award- and Dora-nominated comedian, actor, and screenwriter based in Toronto. His recent writing credits include the shows Shelved, Made For TV, and The Popularity Papers. He has also written on Run the Burbs, TallBoyz, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, and The Beaverton, the latter two garnering CSA nominations for Best Writing in Variety or Sketch Comedy. His feature screenplay Toughen Up was part of the 2023 Whistler Film Festival Screenwriters’ Lab, and is being further developed with Fae Pictures.

On the performance side, Brandon is an alumnus of Toronto’s Second City Mainstage, where he co-wrote and performed four revues, including the Canadian Comedy Award-nominated Party Today (Panic Tomorrow) and The Best Is Yet to Come Undone. He has also lent his voice to many cartoons, including Gary and His Demons, Doomlands, Pinecone & Pony, and Transformers: BotBots.

Carleen Nimrod is a Caribbean-Canadian screenwriter-producer who has turned her years of experience in the music, arts, and not-for-profit industries into an emerging career in film and television. Passionate about stories of identity, intercultural conflict, advocacy, and faith, Carleen creates character-based content that amplifies the narratives of women, marginalized groups, and racialized communities.

Carleen has penned a number of short films – Fricken’ Spielberg, Unveiled, Remember Mei; a pilot, and Opus Thirteen – and is currently developing an African-Caribbean proof-of-concept short film, Table Manners, with co-creators Nana Abraham and Jemila Jackson. She has toured parts of Canada with an Indigenous theatre group, produced a short documentary for a performing arts college, and had a photograph selected as the featured image in a Vintage Black Canada x TIFF Lightbox collaboration (2022).

Carleen holds a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Leadership: Screenwriting, and a Bachelor of Music from McGill University. She resides in Pickering, ON.

Writer/director/producer Jessie Anthony is a proud Haudenosaunee woman from the Onondaga Nation, Beaver clan, born and raised in the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory in Ontario, Canada. She graduated from the Indigenous Independent Filmmaking Program with a Bachelor of Motion Picture Arts from Capilano University.

Jessie is a Telefilm Talent to Watch recipient for her first feature film titled Brother, I Cry, which won the 2020 BC Emerging Filmmakers Award at the Vancouver International Film Festival, the Audience Choice Award in the 2020 imagineNATIVE Film Festival, Best Screenwriting Award at the 2021 Vancouver International Women's Film Festival, and Best Screenwriting and Best Direction in a Motion Picture at the 2021 Leo Awards. Jessie is also the producer of the Canadian Screen Award-nominated Indigenous Queer series Querencia, which won the imagineNATIVE Pitch Competition, gaining a broadcast deal with APTN/The Bell Fund and Telefilm Talent to Watch. She had the opportunity to participate in a director's mentorship on The Handmaid's Tale with Emmy award-winning cinematographer and director Dana Gonzales, through the support of the ISO and the DGC.

Jessie recently wrapped up her third season as a writer in the Indigenous TV comedy series writers' room Acting Good with CTV.

Moniquea Marion is a Saskatchewan-based Métis writer and producer. She’s a graduate of the Second City Conservatory in Toronto and the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theatre in NYC.

This year, Moniquea was one of 6 writers from across Canada to participate in the inaugural 2024 Reelworld Training Lab presented by Amazon MGM Studios, and is on one of 4 teams to participate in the 2023/24 National Screen Institute’s Series Incubator.

Last year, Moniquea was a part of Creative Saskatchewan’s inaugural Whistler Film Festival Market Accelerator, and in 2022 she was part of the Women in Animation ACE accelerator. She is a thrice-selected participant for the 2024, 2023, and 2019 Netflix-BANFF Diversity of Voices program, and in 2019 she was a part of the Reelworld Emerging 20 Program.

Moniquea was nominated for Best Female Improviser by NOW Magazine in 2014 and 2015, and is responsible for producing 3 web series.

Norman Yi Li is a Chinese Canadian film and television writer based in Vancouver, BC. He has earned a B.Sc. in Cognitive Systems – Computational Intelligence and Design from the University of British Columbia. His work delves into the complexities of human psychology, the evolution of cultural identity, and the social impacts of emerging technology.

Norman is a semi-finalist at the Austin Film Festival Script Competition, and his short films have screened at the Whistler Film Festival and the Vancouver Asian Film Festival. Norman is an alumnus of the Pacific Screenwriting Program, where he penned an episode for an original series by Will Pascoe, subsequently optioned by Skydance Media. In 2022, Norman worked as a writers’ assistant on Netflix’s hit series, The Night Agent. Recently, he has participated in the Warner Bros. Discovery Access Canada/ Break The Room Mid-Level Writers Room. Norman is represented by Independent Artist Group.

Vincent Lui is a Chinese Canadian writer based out of Toronto/Hamilton. A graduate of the Canadian Film Centre’s inaugural Bell Media Prime Time Comedy TV Writing program and the BIPOC TV & Film’s Kids' TV Writing Incubator, his latest works include writing for the eco-focused Future Chicken animated kids show (Wind Sun Sky), where he has written over 200 short scripts and podcasts in the span of a year.

Vincent’s past work includes writing for children’s animated shows Pet Shop Zombies (Epic Story Media) and L’il Stompers (IoM Media), as well as season 2 of the award-winning Tokens webseries. He likes funny, especially funny with heart, and believes the best stories come from the worst decisions. Vincent is currently developing two animated projects and three live action shows, including an Asian-inspired supernatural comedy – UNDOCUMENTED.