Toronto Women Film Festival's dedication to women's cinema

The Toronto Women Film Festival is dedicated to supporting, recognizing, and empowering women's voices in cinema. It honors and celebrates films by talented women filmmakers from around the globe. Over the past few years, the festival has showcased films by female directors at venues like Carlton Cinema, Innis Town Hall at the University of Toronto, and various art centers and digitally through the annual women's catalogue of the Toronto Film magazine. The festival holds a seasonal competition, and hosts live annual screening events each September.

Each season, the festival team nominates and selects films and artists for different sections of the seasonal competition. The festival focuses on female-driven stories and independent female directors, producers, writers, actresses, cinematographers, editors, and all female artists contributing to the cinematic language as women in film. It seeks to discover, promote, screen, and award female filmmakers and stories about women in societies worldwide.

In recent years, the Toronto Women Festival has become one of the most popular festivals dedicated to female talent in the film industry. The jury and programmers have been selected from award-winning artists working in media from Canada, the United States, Austria, Germany, Japan, Iran, India, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and worldwide. The committee of the festival proudly announced the winners of the latest seasonal edition of the festival on January 25.

Best Narrative Feature & Best Director

Love, Danielle

Director: Marianna Palka

Best Narrative Short

The Girl

Director: Mandy Kowalski

Best Feature Documentary

Echoes from Borderland

Director: Lara Miléna Brose

Best Short Documentary

Né à Belfond. Versteckt geboren

Director:  Christa Miranda

Best Experimental

I,doll

Director: dasol jeon

Honorable Mention Experimental Feature

If This Boy Died

Director: Anne-Li Ramirez van de Graaf

Honorable Mention Experimental Short

a PUSH and a PULL

Directors: Kristin Alexander, Maggie M. Bailey

Best Comedy

It ain't a hard question

Director: Gabriela Ivette Sandoval Torres

Best Horror

Lifeboat

Director: Vanessa-Tatjana Beerli

Best Animation

Raka

Director: Daneille Jacobs Joubert

Best Web/TV/Pilot

Before Anyone Else

Director: Samantha Barrett

Best Music Video

Turning Tables

Director: Luca Celine Müller

Best Student Film

Dollhouse

Director: Keshet Gadish

Best Actress

Cécile-Gex Charnay

Immeasurable

Best Cinematographer

Petra Korner

The Mariana Trench

Best Scriptwriter

LE TALLEC Anne

The wrong door

Best Producers

Megan Follows-Penny Noble-Marie Dame

Stealing Sky

Best Music

GIOCATTOLI

Lena Rastegaeva

Best LGBTQ

Double Booking Part of the Scare BNB franchise

Director: Christin Baker

Best Human Rights

The Echoes

Director: Gamze Tanrıvermiş

Best Film About Women

Stay At Home, Mom

Director: Mary Zappulla

Best Environmental

Where the Trees Grow

Director: Helle Løvstø Severinsen

Best First-Time Filmmaker

And We Fly Through Days

Director: Janne Schmidt

Best thriller

The Postcards

Director: Jasmine McLaughlin

Best Unproduced Script

THE PORTRAIT

Writer: Susan Eileen Jizba

Best Historical Film

LONE STAR THREE

Director: Karen Stirgwolt

Best Biographical Film

Three Sisters in a Sketchbook

Director: Romana Turina

Best Sport Film

Cali Girls

Director: Jen Whalen

Best Youth Artist

Polly Gallant-McLean

MONICA'S NEWS

Honorable Mention Student Film

Ashlee Sung

The Price of Divinity