What To Watch This International Women’s Day: DGC Ontario Productions Available Now & Coming Soon

Features and Series Made By DGC Ontario Women Available to Watch Now

Feature Films

Scarborough
_{Director Shasha Nakhai} 

Named one of TIFF Canadian Top 10 for 2022 and has received 11 CSA Award nominations and a TFCA Rogers Best Canadian Film nominee. 

Adapted from the critically acclaimed novel by Catherine Hernandez, Scarborough is an unflinching portrait of three low-income families struggling to endure within a system that’s set them up for failure. It shows the love and perseverance communities can foster, lifting up families to overcome the obstacles placed in their way.

Watch: https://www.tiff.net/events/scarborough

Night Raiders
_{Director Danis Goulet, Production Designer Zazu Myers, Sound Editor Claire Dobson, Production Manager Catherine Lang, Production Manager Alana Omolayole} 

Named one of TIFF Canadian Top 10 for 2022 and has received 11 CSA Award nominations and a TFCA Rogers Best Canadian Film nominee. 

With several groundbreaking short films behind her, Danis Goulet, named Playback’s Director of the Year for 2021, makes her feature debut with one of the most important Canadian films in recent memory. A searing thriller set in the near future, Night Raiders digs deep into Canada’s painful past to craft a compelling, propulsive piece of genre cinema.

Watch: https://www.tiff.net/events/night-raiders

Named one of TIFF Canadian Top 10 for 2022 and has received 8 CSA Award nominations.

Based on the international best-selling novel by Miriam Toews and directed by Michael McGowan, All My Puny Sorrows is the poignant story of two former Mennonite sisters – Elf (Sarah Gadon), a concert pianist obsessed with ending her life, and writer Yoli (Alison Pill), tormented by self-doubt and going through a tough divorce. The sisters’ wisecracking banter and awareness of each other’s foibles indicates a profound love and mutual dependency, but as Yoli struggles to understand Elf and protect her from her demons, the women’s fundamental differences come to the fore.

Watch: https://tiff.net/events/all-my-puny-sorrows

TV Series

The Kings of Napa
_{Director Winnifred Jong, Director Bosede Williams} 

Currently available on OWN TV

The Kings of Napa is focused on a picturesque Napa Valley, California vineyard owned by the Kings, an aspirational African-American family whose wealth and status land them in design magazines and society pages. The wine business has brought the family success and acclaim, but following the patriarch’s sudden exit from the company, his three children must grapple for the reigns to the kingdom — to their own power, wealth, and legacy. Winnifred is also nominated for a CSA Award for Best Comedy Director for Pretty Hard Cases.

Watch: https://www.oprah.com/sp/the-kings-of-napa-s1.html

Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock!
_{Director Jordan Canning, Picture Editor Marianna Khoury, Sound Editor Kelly McGahey, Sound Effects Editor Kayla Stewart, Production Manager Leslie Cowan}

Streaming on Apple TV+

Jim Henson’s fun-loving, musical Fraggles are back! Join Gobo, Red, Wembley, Mokey, Boober, and new Fraggle friends on hilarious, epic adventures about the magic that happens when we celebrate and care for our interconnected world. We recently spoke to the DGC Creatives behind the new Fraggle Rock reboot about their experience working on this joyful and colourful production. 

Watch: https://tv.apple.com/ca/show/fraggle-rock-rock-on

Run The ‘Burbs
_{Director & Executive Producer Aleysa Young, Director Joyce Wong, Director Melanie Orr, Production Designer Ingrid Jurek, Picture Editor Lindsay Allikas, Picture Editor Jennifer Essex-Chew, Sound Editor Kristi McIntyre, Production Manager Chantal Kemp}

New episodes Wednesdays on CBC & CBC Gem

Co-created by Scott Townsend and Kim’s Convenience breakout star Andrew Phung, Run the ‘Burbs follows the Phams, a young, bold Vietnamese-South Asian-Canadian family taking a different approach to living life to the fullest, while changing the way we think about contemporary family values and life in the ‘burbs.

Watch: https://gem.cbc.ca/media/run-the-burbs

DGC Ontario Women Creatives At SXSW

Feature Films

Slash/Back
_{Director Nyla Innuksuk, Production Designer Zosia Mackenzie, Picture Editor Simone Smith, Sound Editor Kristi McIntyre, Production Manager Jennifer Mesich} 

World Premiere, March 13

Pangnirtung, Nunavut: A sleepy hamlet nestled in the majestic mountains of Baffin Island in the Arctic Ocean, wakes up to a typical summer day. No school, no cool boys (well… except one), and 24-hour sunlight. But for Maika and her ragtag friends, the usual summer is suddenly not in the cards when they discover an alien invasion threatening Pang. But these teenagers have been underestimated their whole lives, and using makeshift weapons and their horror movie knowledge, they’re about to show the aliens you don’t fuck with the girls from Pang.

Watch: https://schedule.sxsw.com/2022/films/2053751

Stay The Night
_{Director Renuka Jeyapalan}

World Premiere, March 12

At a time when dating apps and casual hook-ups are the “new romance standard,” reserved and very single Grace feels like an outcast. But when she meets Carter Stone, a professional athlete on the outs who has his own decision to make, she wonders if maybe Carter is the perfect solution to her problem. After their first attempt at a one-night stand goes awry, they end up spending the evening walking and talking through the streets of Toronto, leading them to a connection neither of them expected.

Watch: https://schedule.sxsw.com/2022/films/2054008

Short Films

OMI
_{Director Kelly Fyffe-Marshall}

World Premiere, March 13

Young TJ and his father Tyrone are going on their annual fishing trip in a cove off of the ocean. When TJ plays around and falls off the boat, he struggles to keep afloat. When his dad reaches in to save him, what emerges from the deep waters reveals life will never be the same.

Watch: https://schedule.sxsw.com/2022/films/2053913

Features and Series Made By DGC Ontario Women, Coming Soon To A Theatre Or Streamer Near You

Feature Films

Firestarter
_{Production Designer Zosia Mackenzie, Sound Editor Eve Correa Guedes, Location Manager Ingrid Fielden, Production Manager Michelle Koerssen}

May 13 in theatres and on Peacock

The new Blumhouse feature based on the classic Stephen King horror novel, a father (Zac Efron) must protect his young daughter after she develops pyrokinesis and is hunted by a secret government agency that intends to capture and control her.

Women Talking
_{Director Sarah Polley, Supervising Sound Editor Jane Tattersall, Post Production Supervisor Lori Waters, Sound Editor Krystin Hunter,  Picture Editor Roslyn Kalloo, Location Manager Anne Richardson, Production Manager Jessica Cheung} 

Release date TBD

Based on the Miriam Toews book of the same name, in which a group of women in an isolated Mennonite religious colony in Bolivia struggle to reconcile their faith with a string of sexual assaults committed by the colony’s men. In a recent interview with Maclean’s, Sarah Polley has spoken of her return to filmmaking with Women Talking as a homecoming: “This is where I grew up. There is nowhere I am going to feel more at home than at 4 a.m. in the dark, in a minivan, going to a film set, going home for the holidays. I grew up in this circus. I tried to shift my identity so I wasn’t a circus animal. But part of me grew up there and feels a sense of belonging there. This time I felt a joy I hadn’t noticed before, because I was choosing it.”

Infinity Pool
_{Production Designer Zosia Mackenzie, Production Manager Hayley Brown}

Release date TBD

A science-fiction thriller film written and directed by Brandon Cronenberg and an international Canadian/European co-production starring Alexander Skarsgård. James (Skarsgård) and Em (Cleopatra Coleman) are young, rich, in love, and on vacation. Their all-inclusive resort in La Tolqa boasts island tours and gleaming beaches. But outside of the hotel gates waits something much more dangerous and seductive, beyond the edge of paradise.

Crimes of the Future
_{Production Designer Carol Spier, Sound Editor Jill Purdy}

Release date TBD

An upcoming internationally co-produced horror film shot in Greece and written and directed by David Cronenberg. Taking a deep dive into the not-so-distant future, humans have moved beyond their natural state and into a metamorphosis, altering their biological makeup with synthetic organs. Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) is a beloved performance artist who has turned the removal of these organs into a spectacle for his loyal followers to marvel at in real-time theatre. But with both the government and a strange subculture taking note, Tenser is forced to consider what would be his most shocking performance of all.

TV Series

Hello (Again)
_{Produced by 100 Dragons, Founded by DGC Ontario’s Teresa Ho. Production Designer Liz Bischof, Production Manager Claire Lee, Production Manager Samantha Little} 

Premieres March 25 on CBC Gem

Hello (Again) is created by Nathalie Younglai (Coroner) and Simu Liu (Kim’s Convenience) and follows the complicated romance between chef Jayden and ER resident Avery. On a fateful day, Jayden and Avery bump into each other at a park and immediately fall hopelessly in love. Sparks fly… until they stop. Six months after their unceremonious breakup, a chance encounter will send Jayden back in time to the day that he and Avery met. Will Jayden learn to fix the mistakes of his past and win Avery back…or is history doomed to repeat itself?  

Are you a DGC Ontario Member that identifies as a woman and are working on a production you’d like included in this post? Drop us a line at ldigirolamo@dgcontario.ca