Best Filmmaker

GOLD WINNER

Tyler Simmonds
website

SILVER WINNER

Shelley Thompson
website

BRONZE WINNER

Taylor Olson

When The Coast asks Tyler Simmonds why he thinks people tend to connect with his films so strongly, he replies easily: “I honestly think it’s just authenticity. It’s very real. I don’t really fabricate anything,” he says. The director has long built emotional resonance visually through close-up shots and slow-motion cuts. “It’s really important for me to get images that really touch people,” he adds.

When it comes to his latest release—the Lead With Love series—he says the inspiration behind the film, for himself and his collaborators, came from talking “about what the world needs right now. At that moment in time—last year, I think, or early this year—we felt that there was just so much division happening in the world. So much fighting between people because of the social justice issues that were going on, and also we were in a pandemic. So we sat down, we were like, We need to inject some positivity into the world. So we came up with this idea to talk with local people who really went through some hard challenges but instead of them lashing out getting angry about those experiences—which would be valid—they decided to turn it into careers helping people.” It was exactly what Halifax needed.