Habibata Ouarme is an emerging Canadian filmmaker. She was recently awarded a Canada Council for the Arts research grant for her next project, 1001 couronnes pour ma tête, a look at the history and culture of African and Afro-descendant hairstyles. She serves on the board of RAFIQ, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping Quebec’s immigrant and racialized women. She is currently exploring ideas to bring her unique perspective to her first short drama.

Jim Donovan is a bilingual director who has worked from coast to coast. He’s directed dramatic series and films for Cinar, Pixcom, Cirrus, Gaumont, Universal TV, CTV and CBC, including 3 saisons, Le clan, Le siège, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Undressed, Naked Josh, Instant Star, Cracked, Heartland and Flashpoint. He won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Direction. His work has been selected for many international festivals and has received multiple nominations."

Denis McCready has been working in the Quebec film and television industry since 1996. He started off directing commercials for music channel MusiquePlus before becoming head of advertising for MusiquePlus, MusiMax, Super Écran and Canal Indigo. The early 2000s saw McCready working with independent production companies, where he gained experience as a production director, line producer, and producer of documentaries, documentary series, and dramas. No stranger to technical and creative challenges, McCready has produced low-budget auteur documentaries on subjects as diverse as dance, music, the environment and child trafficking, as well as big-budget documentary series dealing with science, exploration, and war. He has overseen shoots both in Canada and abroad, many in locations that are hard to access (the Arctic, NASA, the Russian space program) or dangerous (the Atacama and Mojave deserts, the giant Cave of Crystals in Naica, Mexico). He oversaw the production of hundreds of special-effects sequences for the series Mars Rising and produced and wrote the serious game L’or du golfe for the ICI Radio-Canada website. McCready has delivered HD programs for major broadcasters, including National Geographic (US and international), Discovery (Canada, US, Latin America), History (Canada), ARTE (France/Germany), NHK (Japan), CBC, Radio-Canada, Canal D, and Télé-Québec. In addition, he’s worked on a number of official international co-productions (Canada-France, Canada-Mexico). McCready won several awards as the producer of Chercher le courant (including the RIDM Audience Choice Award and Gémeaux Award for Best Documentary: Society) and Bas! Au-delà du Redlight (NFB Colin Low Award at DOXA). The films he’s produced have screened at many international festivals, including Hot Docs, Visions du réel, the International Festival of Films on Art, NXNE, DOXA, the Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM), and the Vancouver International Film Festival. He has also produced two documentaries directed by Ian Jaquier: L’or du golfe, with Kevin Parent, and Kanata: Aujourd’hui la colonisation, as well as the powerful documentary MTL Punk: La première vague, by Érik Cimon and Alain Cliche. McCready was Executive Producer for the NFB’s Canadian Francophonie Studio. Previously, he worked on many NFB short and feature-length documentaries and interactive projects as a producer for the Documentary Studio and the Institutional Program. Christine Aubé has been a producer at the NFB since 2018, and prior to that she worked for independent producers and broadcasters from the Canadian Francophonie. Christine has a passion for storytelling, images and sound, in all their creative forms. She’s committed to helping a new generation of filmmakers, as well as more experienced artists, create powerful and accomplished work that has an impact in Canada and abroad. "