TFS Faculty and Alumni Celebrate Contributions to Canadian Screen Award Winning Projects
The 2022 Canadian Screen Awards were held from April 4-10, and several of the projects Toronto Film School faculty and alumni worked on walked away with trophies.
Presented annually by the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television, the Canadian Screen Awards recognize artistic and technical excellence in Canadian film, television and digital media.
On the film side of things, the big winner of 2022 was Scarborough, which took home awards in eight of the 11 categories it was nominated for, including Best Motion Picture, Achievement in Direction, Adapted Screenplay, Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (Liam Diaz), and the John Dunning Best First Feature Film Award, among others.
Lauded by Variety magazine as giving a “ground-breaking voice” to an ignored community, Scarborough is based on the likewise critically acclaimed 2017 novel of the same name by Catherine Hernandez, which tells the story of three low-income families struggling to endure within a system that’s set them up for failure.
Both Toronto Film School’s Curriculum Development Specialist Mercedes Cardella and Class of 2021 Film Production alum Kyisha Williams had acting roles in Scarborough. While Williams plays a character named Star, Cardella played the supporting role of Ms. Finnegan, whom she describes as a “passionate inner-city school educator” with a keen eye for identifying talent in her classroom.
“So proud of the entire Scarborough cast, crew and everyone involved to make this happen,” Cardella said in a celebratory Instagram post in which she thanked the film’s screenwriter, Hernandez, as well its co-directors Shasha Nakhai and Rich Williamson, and associate producer Kenya-Jade Pinto.
“You are all such beautiful people and it was a real blessing to be able to share the magic we all created on set together. I can’t thank you all enough to saying yes and giving me the opportunity to be part of a film that highlighted my community. Scarborough is and will forever be HOME.”
On the television side of things, Toronto Film School faculty and alumni are celebrating seven big wins.
Jann, the hit CTV comedy executive produced by TFS’s Emmy-winning President Andrew Barnsley, took home the award for Best Guest Performance in a Comedy (Michael Bublé). The show, which stars Canadian singer-songwriter Jann Arden as a fictionalized version of herself, was also nominated for: Best Comedy Series, Best Lead Actress in Comedy, Best Writing in a Comedy, and Best Achievement in Casting.
Sort Of, the “big-hearted” new CBC series about a gender-fluid millennial who straddles various identities, took home three Canadian Screen Award trophies – Best Comedy Series, Best Writing in a Comedy and Best Achievement in Make-up. Class of 2018 Writing for Film & Television grad Maxine Clement currently works on the show as an assistant to Fab Filippo, one of Sort Of’s co-creators, writers, directors and producers.
Mousa Ghodratifard, who graduated from TFS’s Film Production program in 2013, worked as a 3rd Assistant Director on Workin’ Moms, which won the 2022 Canadian Screen Award for Best Direction of a Comedy – one of seven nominations the CBC show was nominated for this year.
Coroner, which was nominated in 10 different categories this year, won the 2022 Canadian Screen Award for Best Guest Performance (Tamara Podemski). Both Class of 2018 Writing for Film & Television alum Jhanik Bullard and Acting for Film, TV & the Theatre grad Garima Sood worked on the set of the CBC procedural crime drama – Sood as the 2nd Assistant Camera and Bullard as the Showrunner’s Assistant.
Toronto Film School alumnus Chris Kelly, who graduated from the Acting for Film, TV & the Theatre program in 2018, worked as an Associate Producer for the CBC’s four-time Canadian Screen Award-nominated coverage of the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games, which won the award for Best Sports Host (Andi Petrillo).
