Vancouver, Canada (December 2024) – Women In the Director’s Chair (WIDC) organizers are delighted to announce that Toronto-based filmmaker, Lu Asfaha will receive the 2024 WIDC Feature Film Award, which includes an impressive $350,000 worth of in-kind services.

Lu’s feature-length screenplay, They Echo, is a psychological horror about a young woman, Trevi who returns to her childhood home to care for her dying mother, and is then confronted by the ghosts of her family’s sins. 

“I am incredibly proud and honored to be this year’s award recipient,” says Lu Asfaha, “joining an incredible group of talented and accomplished women directors that have won this award in the past. I am also excited to work with WIDC, Carol Whiteman and the They Echo team to bring this powerful story to life. My hope and wish is that They Echo can both entertain audiences and be part of an ongoing conversation in communities of colour.”  

“This year’s jury described Lu Asfaha’s They Echo as a page-turner they could not put down,” says WIDC’s Dr. Carol Whiteman (With Love and a Major Organ, Rustic Oracle, Red Snow) who provides executive producing services as part of the award. “Deftly utilizing genre to captivate her audience, Lu and her award-winning feature film screenplay, They Echo, were a unanimous jury choice.”

They Echo is being produced by Toronto-based Snail Mail Media’s Fonna Seidu (VIRGINS!, Dirty Bad Wrong, Being Black in Toronto) and co-produced by LaRue Entertainment (Someone Lives Here, The Amazing Gayl Pile). Executive producers also include Lindsay Blair Goeldner (I Like Movies, Queen Tut) and Joe Pirro (Driveways, We Grown Now). They Echo is funded by Telefilm Canada. 

The 2024 WIDC Feature Film Award will be announced at a hybrid event (Online and In-person) hosted by WIDC on December 4, 2024.  

About the Recipient

Lu Asfaha is an award-winning Toronto filmmaker whose films cross genres to externalize the internal. In 2022 she was a resident of the CFC Film Program Director’s Lab, where she wrote and directed short body horror Sight. It went on to premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival in 2023. The East African-Canadian comedy web series VIRGINS! premiered on CBC Gem in 2022, of which Lu directed three episodes and served as story editor on the series. Her short Fresh Meat screened at festivals across North America and opened for Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You at the Toronto Outdoor Picture Show. It was also broadcast nationally on CBC’s Canadian Reflections before winning Best Canadian Short at Regent Park Film Festival. Lu was BlueCat Screenplay’s 2022 Feature winner and took home their Fellini Award for best international script for her upcoming feature film debut THEY ECHO. She was previously a Hot Docs Doc Accelerator Fellow, a ScreenCraft finalist, a Netflix-Banff Diversity of Voices pitch participant, and won the RBC Emerging Director Award at Regent Park Film Festival in 2019. Most recently, she wrote the thriller-of-the-week My Husband’s Baby for Neshama Entertainment, which premiered as a Tubi Original.

About WIDC Feature Film Award 

First presented in 2009 as part of WIDC’s suite of offerings addressing gender equity and inclusion, the Feature Film Award provides development, production and completion services for a Canadian woman or non-binary director’s first of second live action fiction feature film.  The award has already supported 15 multiple award-winning feature-length films by Canadian women directors including Kim Albright (With Love and a Major Organ), Pamela Gallant (Monica’s News) and award-winning BC-based Inuk/Scottish Settler filmmaker Lindsay McIntyre whose latest short, NIGIQTUQ ᓂᒋᖅᑐᖅ (The South Wind) – a concept short for her upcoming feature, The Words We Can’t Speak – is in consideration for the 2025 Academy Awards. 

Presented annually the WIDC Feature Film Award is peer juried and has recently been supported by MELS Studios, Keslow Camera, Panavision Canada, MTL Grande, Sunbelt Rentals Film & TV, Distillery VFX, JAM POST Inc., Rocket Science VFX, Elemental Post, Difuze, North Shore Studios, The Bridge Studios, Vancouver Film Studios, The Research House Clearance Services Inc., Front Row Insurance Brokers, Descriptive Video Works, Line 21 Media Services, Power of Babel, EP Canada, AA VFX, Portable Electric, Champ & Pepper.

About WIDC

Founded in 1996/97, Women In the Director’s Chair (WIDC) is an internationally respected Canadian professional development offering, specially designed to advance the skills, careers and fiction screen projects of mid-career women and non-binary screen directors. There are 370+ WIDC director alumni living and working across Canada and around the world and earning hundreds of awards and nominations for their work annually. Co-created by representatives of ACTRA, GEMS Vancouver (formerly Women In Film and Television Vancouver), and The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity which was its home venue for eighteen years, WIDC is presented with major support from Telefilm Canada, and Warner Bros. Discovery Access Canada, and with the participation of Creative BC, Actra Fraternal Benefit Society, ACTRA National, UBCP/ACTRA, Independent Production Fund, and the in kind support of GAT PR.

WIDC appreciates community collaborations with the National Film Board, GEMFest Vancouver, Female Eye Film Festival, St John’s International Women’s Film Festival, Reelworld Film Festival and Screen Institute, Crazy 8’s, TIFF, VIFF, Weengushk Film Institute, Whistler Film Festival, the Director’s Guild of Canada BC District, and the Director’s Guild of Canada National.

WIDC recognizes the term Woman/Women is in an evolution of language. Our intention in our use is to be fully inclusive of underrepresented persons who may identify as she / her and or they / them and share the goals and values of WIDC to promote these marginalized voices and stories.  Further, we gratefully acknowledge that the WIDC program originates from the traditional and unceded lands of the Coast Salish people, including the xmkym (Musqueam), Swxwu7mesh (Squamish), and slilwta (Tseil-wau-tuth) Nations. We also acknowledge the Indigenous Nations on whose traditional lands our guests, participants, and colleagues live, work and create. We commit to working in the spirit of collaboration and respect for the generations that came before, those living now, and the generations to come.