
Writer, Actress, Producer and
Unrepentant Creator
Jennifer Dale
Jennifer is a veteran actor of Canadian theatre, film and television. She is the recipient of an Outstanding Achievement Award from Toronto Women In Film and Television and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Canadian Film and Television. In 2016 she was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award for her role in the TV series What Would Sal Do. Some of her film credits include —Suzanne, The Adjuster, Cadillac Girls, Whale Music, Love Come Down, The Dark Stranger, and Clara. For television—Saving Hope, Suits, Lost Girl, Schitt’s Creek, So You Said Yes, Empire Inc., Love and Larceny, Grand Larceny, Revenge of the Land, Rumours, Once A Thief, Monk and The Eleventh Hour. She has won international awards for her leading role in the feature film Into Invisible Light which she also co-wrote. She is a lead character in seasons 3 & 4 of the CBC series Coroner and 2 seasons of the Netflix series, Sex Life. Also 2 seasons of the SyFy series SurrealEstate. Soon to be released is the short film, The Ugly Chickens in which she plays dual roles. And also David Cronenberg’s film, The Shrouds, having its premiere in competition at Cannes in May 2024. She completed shooting in December on a Christmas film, Operation Nutcracker and has recently written a movie script titled A Snarky Christmas.

Writer and Unrepentant Creator
Beatriz Hausner
Beatriz Hausner has published several poetry collections, including Sew Him Up (2010), Enter the Raccoon (2012), Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart (2020), which contains a section on Empress Theodora, and provided the initial inspiration for Unrepentant, and She Who Lies Above (2023). Her books have been published internationally and translated into several languages, including her native Spanish, French, Dutch and most recently into Greek. Hausner’s translations of Latin American surrealist poets have exerted an important influence on her own writing. Hausner is a respected literary editor, was one of four founders of Quattro Books, was President of the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada and Chair of the Public Lending Right Commission.

Director
Sara Basso
Sara Basso is a Director, Writer, and Creative Producer based in Toronto. Sara was most recently commissioned by the estate of Gord Downie as Creative Director on a series of music videos for Gord’s final solo record, Away Is Mine. She also directed the award winning commercial campaign announcing the United Nations’ declaration of October 11th as the International Day Of The Girl with Plan Canada, and was a Story Producer on CBC’s critically acclaimed documentary series, Hello Goodbye. Sara expanded her work in 2019, teaming up with friend and creative collaborator Director X to create Operation Prefrontal Cortex: an initiative created to confront Toronto’s gun violence crisis through mindfulness and meditation programs. Their short documentary entitled Quiet Minds Silent Streets, which follows this work within a high-risk community, had its world premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival. IMDb Credits

Writer, Actress
Katherine East
Katherine East is from the Indigenous village of Killarney (Shebahonaning) in Northern Ontario. Her education was eclectic - from a one room schoolhouse in Killarney - to homeschooled by her parents on her family’s sailboat in The Bahamas. She then attended the prestigious Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Arts in the UK. Katherine is now based in Canada and performs on stage and screen.

Director, Actress
Valerie Buhagiar
Valerie is an international-award-winning Maltese/Canadian filmmaker and actor.
She first came to prominence as the star of Canadian indie films Roadkill and HWY 61. Since she’s appeared in scores of films and TV series. She has acted in several Dora-winning productions and won a Dora nomination for her role in Botticelli in the Fire and Sunday in Sodom at Canadian Stage. Valerie has also carved out a parallel career as a filmmaker. She honed her unique vision, a blend of surreal and emotional warmth in a series of critically acclaimed films.
Her first short film as a writer/director/producer was The Passion of Rita Camilleri which won several awards including Gold at the Chicago International Film Festival. She has since gone off to make several award-winning films. Recently, The Dogs won Best Female Director at the Montreal Indie Film Festival. Carmen, a Maltese/Canadian feature has just been noted as top 30 films streamed through Kanopy and NY Times Critics’ Choice award, 100% Rotten Tomatoes, Best Feature at the Canadian Film Festival, Best Cinematography at Whistler, Best in Show at FEFF and Malta’s pick for the Oscars. It’s Hard to be Human, won Best Canadian Feature at FEFF and was nominated for Best New Visions at Cinequest, California. The Anniversary won Best Narrative Feature – Comedy – Cinequest, Best Supporting Actor, Best Leading Actress, and Best Feature Film – Buffalo Niagara Film Festival. Valerie was the Honorary Director at the 2022 Female Eye Film Festival. She’s a TIFF Talent Lab and a WIDC Alumnae. Karlovy Vary Film Festival and Indie Cinema Sudbury have had retrospectives of Valerie’s work.

Director
Teodora Vilotijevic
Teodora graduated Film Production at York University in 2023 and is an aspiring screenwriter and director. She also often works in producer roles and is collaborating on several short films in the last year.

Director
Annette Mangaard
Annette Mangaard is an award-winning Danish born, Canadian filmmaker whose directing and producing credits include six one-hour documentaries for TVO, Knowledge and CBC networks. Her highly critically reviewed feature film Fish Tale Soup commissioned by City TV starred Remy Girard and screened theatrically at Cineplex Odeon theatres. Mangaard is the recipient of various film festival awards as well as a Gemini nomination Gemini for Best Director of a Documentary for General Idea: Art AIDS and the fin de siècle. Her body of work has been presented as a retrospective at the Palais de Glace, Buenos Aires, Argentina and at the PAFID, Patagonia, Argentina. Mangaard has been invited to present solo screenings of her films at the Pacific Cinematheque in Vancouver, Canada and at the Kino Arsenal Cinematheque in Berlin, West Germany. Her one hour documentary KINNGAIT: RIDING LIGHT INTO THE WORLD, about the changing face of the Inuit artists of Cape Dorset premiered at the Art Gallery of Ontario and was invited to Australia for a special screening celebrating Canada Day with the Canadian High Commission. Mangaard’s work has shown extensively around the world at art galleries, cinematheques and film festivals.

Writer
Mary Melfi
Mary Melfi has published over a dozen books. Her novels, Infertility Rites, and Via Roma, were both translated into French, as was her critically acclaimed memoir, Italy Revisited. Her children’s fantasy book, Ubu, the Witch Who Would be Rich, was published by Doubleday Canada. Also, a playwright, Mary Melfi’s My Italian Wife, a comedy, was produced in Montreal in 2015; the play sold out. Three of her plays were published by Guernica Editions. A number of her books were adapted by the author for the stage. Her most recent publication, a book of poems, “Welcome to Hard Times,” was released by Ekstasis Editions in 2023. In a book of essays on Mary Melfi’s publications, its editor, Dr. William Anselmi states: “Melfi’s work achieves importance by bringing into play, displacement, irony, ethnicity, class and gender – for being both of the times and outside of time… A body of work of international stature.” The author, who is of Italian descent, is a recipient of the Giornata Internazionale Della Donna Award. More information on her work can be found on her website, as well as on her Wikipedia page

Director/ camera/ editor
Antonio D’Alfonso
Poet, novelist, essayist, translator, Antonio D’Alfonso has published more than sixty books (including translations) and has made five feature films. Born in 1953, he is the founder of Guernica Editions which he managed for thirty-three years before passing it on to new owners in 2010. For his writings, he won the Trillium Award, the Bressani Award. His film Bruco won the New York Independent Film Award. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. In 2016, he received a Honorary Doctorate from Athabasca University. His new film, TATA (Daddy), was released in July 2020. The Two-Headed Man: Collected Poems 1970-2020 was published in July 2020. He has started on youtube a series of Conversations with artists and producers. His essays of In Italics: In Defense of Ethnicity (1996), Gambling With Failure (2005), and Poetica del plurilinguismo (2015) offer a unique perspective on decentralized identities. His books have been translated in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Estonian, and Portuguese. He has published, in 2022, Outside Looking In (Entries 1980-1981) and, in 2023, The Italian Canadian Writer. In Italian, he published ‘Federazione per il futuro’ in La diaposora italiana in Canada (Ed. A.J.
Tamburri and S. Mangione, 2022). In 2024, he was given a Lifetime Achievement Award.