Vancouver director Nimisha Mukerji was one of three winners announced this week in the RBC-Toronto International Film Festival Emerging Filmmakers Competition.
A panel of producers, directors and executives judged the entrants and awarded prizes for the winner and runner-up. Mukerji’s short film The Arrival Hour was named fan favourite, a $5,000 prize, in a cross-Canada online poll in which the five finalists were screened.
The competition is part of Talent Lab, a four-day intensive program at the Toronto festival for selected Canadian and international filmmakers. Each filmmaker is provided with $500 cash to develop a short film for the competition, on the theme of time.
The winners were selected after 17 submissions were narrowed to five finalists by the jury panel.
Newfoundland’s Jordan Canning was the national winner, earning a $15,000 prize for his film Seconds, in which a man’s life flashes before his eyes as he chokes to death.
Honourable mention and $10,000 went to Toronto’s Johnny Ma for Dec. 32, in which the world struggles as time stops at midnight New Year’s Eve.
Mukerji’s The Arrival Hour has a newcomer to Vancouver searching through the night for her destination.
Mukerji earlier earned acclaim for the cystic fibrosis documentary 65_RedRoses, and her new documentary Blood Relative is scrreening at this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival.
