FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Vancouver, Canada (November 2023) – Women In the Director’s Chair (WIDC) organizers are delighted to announce that award-winning Iranian-Canadian filmmaker, Marjan Hashemi will take home the 2023 WIDC Feature Film Award, for her dark comedy debut feature, After Love about an Iranian-Canadian immigrant wife who learns from her defiant daughter and her murderously amorous husband how to walk a line between tolerance and justice. 

“Thank you to WIDC and the Feature Film Award peer jury for their confidence in me and my story that is, at its core, an homage to my own mother’s courage and bold sense of humour,” says Marjan Hashemi. “This prize includes so many invaluable resources, I can hardly wait to meet the sponsors to thank them in person.”  

“Keslow Camera is pleased to support the women and gender diverse directors who receive the WIDC Feature Film Award,” says Lecily Corbett, Executive Director Business Development, Keslow Camera. “We look forward to seeing the artistry that this year’s winner brings to the screen.”

“This year’s jury described Marjan Hashemi’s After Love project as funny, fresh and tragic,” says WIDC’s Dr. Carol Whiteman who provides mentorship and executive producing services as part of the award.  “It was a unanimous choice.”

After Love  is being produced by Toronto-based Gearshift Films Jordan Barker and Borga Dorter whose prod-co is known for creating film and television projects with a universal appeal across a wide spectrum of genres, including Tabija (The White Fortress), Bosnia’s selection for Best International Film for the 2022 Academy Awards.

As part of WIDC’s suite of offerings addressing gender inclusion, the Feature Film Award has already supported eleven multiple award-winning feature-length films by Canadian women directors including Kim Albright whose debut feature, With Love and a Major Organ written by Julia Lederer and produced by Madeleine Davis, world premiered at SXSW, opened Reelworld Film Festival where it won Best Feature, Best Performance and Best Cinematography, and is screening at Whistler Film Festival (November 30 and December 3).

Also in the WIDC Feature Film Award pipeline are Lindsay McIntyre who has completed a concept short for her upcoming feature The Words We Can’t Speak. The short entitled NIGIQTUQ ᓂᒋᖅᑐᖅ (The South Wind) is also screening at the 2023 Whistler Film Festival. It recently won the Live Action Short Award, ImagineNATIVE’s Oscar–qualifying category and will be put forward for 2024 Academy Awards consideration; Pamela Gallant (Monica’s News) and Susanne Serres (Celestine) are currently in post production on their respective Feature Film Award films.

The 2023 WIDC Feature Film Award will be presented at a hybrid event (Online and In-person) hosted by WIDC on November 30.  

BACKGROUNDER

Marjan Hashemi is an award-winning Iranian-Canadian writer/director. With a bachelor’s degree in English literature and a master’s degree in psychology, Marjan went on to study acting for theatre and later, studied Advanced Film and TV at Sheridan College as a writer/director/producer. Initially acting in short films and TV series, she started making her own films in 2017. In 2021, Origami, her LGBTQ coming-of-age short drama, won the best international short film award at the Jakarta Independent Film Festival. Marjan infuses the themes of freedom, love, human bonds, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, and social justice in her work. Besides writing, directing, and producing, Marjan has worked in the Canadian film industry as a casting director, and script supervisor, and she has instructed screenwriting and directing workshops, both in Tehran and in Toronto. Her most recent film as director and co-writer is called Ostracized, a short narrative shot in London, UK, in the summer of 2023, which is currently entering the festival circuit.

About WIDC

WIDC Feature Film Award has recently been supported by Keslow Camera, RAW Camera, Panavision Canada, MELS Studios, William F. White International, Encore VFX, Kalos Studios Vancouver, Elemental Post, North Shore Studios, The Bridge Studios, Vancouver Film Studios, Whites LES, The Research House Clearance Services Inc., Front Row Insurance Brokers, Descriptive Video Works, Line 21 Media Services, Power of Babel, EP Canada, Portable Electric, Champ & Pepper.

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 women directors, with 330 director alumnae across Canada who earn hundreds of awards and nominations for their work annually. Co-created by representatives of ACTRA, 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 with the participation of Creative BC, Actra Fraternal Benefit Society, ACTRA National, Independent Production Fund, and GAT PR.

WIDC appreciates community collaborations with the National Film Board, Vancouver International Women in Film Festival, 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, and the Whistler Film Festival. 

WIDC recognizes the term Woman/Women is in an evolution of language and note that 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 together in the spirit of collaboration and respect for the generations that came before, those living now, and the generations to come.