Talent

Anjali Nayar’s latest Netflix film Hack Your Health went to #1 in 19 countries and top 10 in 77 countries around the world. She is now working on a series with the Golden State Warriors, a highly choreographed musical film with a big Bollywood starlet, and towards the end of 2024 she will enter production on Bestest, a road-trip dark comedy.

Anjali also finished writing her first feature, a South Asian superhero film based on her fantasy short Closer, which has 5 million views and won the 2022 Prism Prize Audience Award. She is also developing a thriller series based in small-town New Brunswick in the 1880s, and a found footage feature horror.

Anjali has directed several commercials for Amazon, Goldman Sachs, Chipotle, Southern Company, ACER, Patagonia, Mountain Equipment Co-Op, and the San Diego Zoo. Anjali’s previous films have been supported by Cinereach, Sundance, and Tribeca, screened at TIFF and Hot Docs, and won countless awards, gone theatrical, and been acquired by Netflix and Amazon.

Before film, Anjali was a climate and space scientist, a semi-pro soccer player, and a foreign correspondent based in East Africa for over a decade.

Darcy Waite is a prolific Indigenous writer-director, who launched his career by directing content he wrote. He started with shorts, many of which screened at festivals throughout North America, including imagineNATIVE, the American Indian Film Festival, and California’s American Indian & Indigenous Film Festival. He continued honing his writing skills by studying screenwriting and sketch comedy at Second City, followed by graduating from the National Screen Institute (NSI) TV Series Incubator. He was also a participant of the 2022 WBD Access x Canadian Academy Writers Program.

Eventually, Darcy’s film festival exposure helped him land an opportunity to direct new media episodes for Snapchat. To date, he's had three digital series greenlit, the most recent being a series Darcy is writer/director on, titled Neighborhood Watch, with APTN. After finding success in short-form content, it wasn’t long before Darcy pivoted to longer form. Darcy began by directing on the docuseries 7th Gen, and eventually directed his first feature, Lucky Strikes, under the Telefilm Talent to Watch Film program. In preparation for episodic TV directing, Darcy has also spent time as a director observer on primetime TV shows such as APTN’s This May Contain Nuts, and the CBC/CW hit drama series Wild Cards.

Erskine “Skin” Forde is a writer and prolific director with over 25 years of experience in the industry. He started as a PA and worked his way up to director. After 1st Assistant Directing on shows like NBC’s Suits, and Amazon’s The Expanse, Skin gained the opportunity to direct on the AMC/Boat Rocker one-hour primetime drama series Beacon 23, starring Lena Headey and Stephan James. He also directed the MOW Dress for Success, starring Mishael Morgan, for Neshama Entertainment/Fox.

Prior to pivoting to longer-form directing, Skin spent years directing plays, commercials, and music videos. His creative and technical filmmaking knowledge and skills have been honed by working on a diverse range of projects domestically and internationally, taking him across Canada and to locations such as South East Asia and the Caribbean. A childhood spent consuming books and listening to radio dramas laid the foundation for Skin to become a writer/director, while spending over 25 years on set has helped him gain expert knowledge on what it takes as a director to make his days, come in on budget, and get the story.

With her very first web series, a portrait of her native Saint-Henri that is both dreamy and realistic, Eva was already making people think (and open up). Dog Days (Amours d'occasion) has shaped her into a refreshing creator, both for her richly varied casts and for her soundtracks that draw on the best of jazz and hip-hop; her voice has an unforgettable poetic lilt.

After her first hit, which went to Cannes (CANNESERIES) and gained her recognition both local and international (Prix Gémeaux for emerging artists 2020; Best foreign-language series, NYC WebFest; Director of the Year, 2022 Gala Dynastie), Eva completed her bachelor’s degree in communications and film at Concordia University and her master’s degree in film at New York University. She’s currently working on her first feature, La professeure, which has received financing under the Production Program of Telefilm Canada.

Faran Moradi is an Iranian-Canadian filmmaker, born and raised in Ontario. Faran recently made his first feature film, set in the Toronto Iranian community, called Tehranto, which was shortlisted for Sundance 2021, nominated for multiple Canadian Screen Awards, and won Cinequest’s Best Feature in 2022. Tehranto recently completed its Canadian and American theatrical runs, and is now available on demand. Faran went on to direct and edit on Emmy Award winning TV shows including Odd Squad, and write and direct the award winning short film Blackpowder and Guilt. He most recently directed 4 episodes of Holly Hobbie (Hulu) and 2 episodes of Dino Dex (Prime).

Gigi Saul Guerrero has been praised as one of the top emerging directors in the horror genre by Empire, Dread Central, Fangoria, and Bloody Disgusting. Gigi is co-founder of Luchagore Productions, based in Vancouver, Canada. Gigi is a Mexican genre director/filmmaker and working actress now living in Vancouver.

She was described by Variety and L’ATTITUDE LATINXT as part of the new wave of Latino talent, and scored a first look deal with Jason Blum’s Blumhouse Productions. Gigi graduated with honors from Capilano University’s Bosa Centre for Film and Animation, recently receiving the Alumni Award of Excellence. Today, Gigi is also a current and student-favorite directing instructor at the prestigious Vancouver Film School.

After 17+ short films, Gigi’s feature debut, Culture Shock for Blumhouse Productions Television, won Best Primetime Movie at the Imagen Awards and is still 100% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. The year 2023 was incredibly busy with directing the anticipated biopic feature about the iconic singer Jenni Rivera, directing the pilot episode for Mexico’s most iconic genre series La hora marcada reboot, and the release of two horror anthologies: Satanic Hispanics and franchise favorite V/H/S/85, with Gigi directing the most memorable segments.

Parisa Barani is an award-winning queer Muslim Iranian-Canadian-American film director. She is slated to direct the upcoming features Haram and Haji, and is in development for her television pilot called Duty Station. Her film Human Terrain stars Maggie Siff and Sarita Choudhury, and is distributed by Refinery29/Shatterbox. It debuted at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival, and was in competition at Geena Davis’ Bentonville Film Festival.

Parisa’s directorial debut Ablution screened at festivals worldwide, including Mill Valley Film Festival, Palm Springs International ShortFest, and Diversity in Cannes Short Film Showcase. Parisa is a directing fellow of Ryan Murphy's Half Initiative Director Shadowing Program 2024, and Netflix’s 2023 TV Episodic Directors on the Rise Masterclass led by Paris Barclay. She is also a participant of the ViacomCBS Emerging Directors Program, the Universal Directors Initiative, and Creative Capital’s On Our Radar, and a recipient of the Tribeca Film Institute Sloan Filmmaker Fund. She has been a semi-finalist for the Sundance Screenwriters Lab.

She was mentored by producing director Bradley Buecker on 9-1-1: Lone Star (Ryan Murphy Productions/Fox, episodes 502/503) and by producing director Ken Girotti on FBI: Most Wanted (CBS/Universal, season finale).

In addition to filmmaking, Parisa has curated and spoken on panels at SXSW and San Francisco State University. She is a programmer at Outfest LGBTQ+ Film Festival, and a graduate of AFI’s Directing Workshop for Women and SITI’s Theatre Intensive Training at Skidmore College, where she was mentored by the legendary Anne Bogart. She is fluent in English and Farsi.

Romeo Candido is an Emmy-nominated director and Canadian Screen Award winner with experience in film, television, theater and music. Showrunner credits include the K-pop television musical series Gangnam Project (CBC/BBC) and The Next Step (BBC). Television director credits include Workin’ Moms (CBC), Popularity Papers (BBC), This Hour Has 22 Minutes (CBC), and the Emmy-nominated Circuit Breakers (Apple TV+). Television writer credits include Son of a Critch (CBC) and the sci-fi epic Another Life (Netflix). His CSA-nominated musical series Topline, for which he serves as creator, writer, director, and composer, currently plays on CBC Gem. His musical Prison Dancer will be making its US debut in Boston in spring of 2025.

Stephanie Joline is a Canadian Screen Award-winning Indigenous director based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her Indigenous roots come from her mother who is Inuit from Labrador; her father is French Acadian from the South shore of Nova Scotia. Equally adept at film and television, Stephanie’s stories provoke conversation, break boundaries, and are deeply rooted in inclusivity and feminism.

Her feature films include Night Blooms (2022) and Play Your Gender (2016). Stephanie has also directed for television and streaming platforms: Women of This Land (2024, CBC); Words Matter (2022, CBC Gem); Farm Crime (2022, CBC Gem); Stream Me (2021, Hollywood Suite); Spirit Talker (2019, APTN). In 2020, she was awarded the Irving Avrich Award from TIFF, recognizing rising Canadian talent. The following year she was long-listed for the DGC Discovery Award, and in 2022 she received Best Nova Scotia Director from Women in Film and TV Atlantic, and won her first Canadian Screen Award for best directing in the factual television category.

Tyler Mckenzie Evans is a Black-Canadian director and screenwriter. During his childhood, to escape the mundanity of the suburbs, he would go to the movie theatres weekly, which is where he discovered his love for storytelling. Tyler has made several short films, including I Live Here which premiered at Aspen Shortsfest in 2022 and is currently streaming in Canada on CBC Gem. Tyler’s latest short film, Diaspora, is a social thriller film about gentrification that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2022 and screened at multiple festivals worldwide. It was also selected for Vimeo Staff Pick and Short of the Week. Tyler is an alumnus of the 2023 TIFF Filmmakers Lab. Tyler’s main goal is to create original and captivating stories centred around Black people and people of colour. He is currently developing his first feature film.