Best Filmmaker

GOLD WINNER

SILVER WINNER

BRONZE WINNER

This is proving to be a good year for Ben Proudfoot. In 2022 the Halifax-born, LA-based documentary filmmaker has netted both an Oscar and a gold Best of Halifax Readers’ Choice Award. The former prize was for his short doc The Queen of Basketball, which reveled in and recapped the life story of Lusia “Lucy” Harris Stewart, the only woman to ever be drafted into the NBA. (This wasn’t Proudfoot’s first brush with the Academy: His 2021 short doc A Concerto is a Conversation was nominated in the best short documentary category.) The latter win, if we may, is a shout-out from his home city and a green light to keep going. “So, a lot of people see short documentaries as sort of a stepping stone to making feature documentaries,” Proudfoot told The Coast in 2021. “As much as feature documentaries are beautiful and important, it’s hard to beat distributing your film on the internet, and being able to capture people's attention and get your story across in 13 minutes.”