2023 jury
Jeanne Leblanc
In the early years of her career, Jeanne Leblanc directed nearly a dozen short films that travelled the world. In 2017, her first feature film, Isla Blanca, was released in cinemas, inviting the audience into an intimate and poetic drama. Her eclectic career reflects a desire to explore the genre and to break down certain cinematic boundaries. A desire to propose strong and original works while playing with the codes of the genre. In this perspective, she directed her second feature film, Les Nôtres, a foray into dramatic suspense. More recently, she directed a 6-episode mini-series, Les yeux fermés, which was broadcast in January 2023.
Annabel Loyola
Filmmaker Annabel Loyola worked for nearly twenty years in film and television in Paris and Montreal before embarking on the direction, production and distribution of her own projects. She has a degree in screenwriting from the Université du Québec à Montréal. She is a member of the La culture à l'école artist directory. In 2010, her first feature documentary and first film dedicated to Jeanne Mance, La folle entreprise, sur les pas de Jeanne Mance, earned her the medal of the Société historique de Montréal and became the starting point of a historical process that led to the official recognition of Jeanne Mance as the founder of Montreal in 2012. The film has had national and international exposure and has been selected for several festivals. After a remarkable release in the spring of 2017 on the occasion of the 375th anniversary of Hôtel-Dieu and Montréal, her second feature documentary Le dernier souffle, au cœur de l'Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal had its international premiere at the prestigious Shanghai International Film Festival and participated in several tours in Québec, Ontario, New Brunswick and France as part of the Mois du film documentaire. His film La ville d'un rêve was released in 2022 and toured extensively in Quebec and France. Along with La folle entreprise and Le dernier souffle, it is the final part of a trilogy on the founding of Montreal.
Ménaïc Raoul
After studying project management and documentary production, producer Ménaïc Raoul began her career as a production manager and producer in feature films. She co-founded Voyelles Films in 2009 in order to produce young Quebec talent and give them the opportunity to express a unique, original and different vision on screen. To date, she has produced fifteen short films and five feature films. Ménaïc Raoul has also worked on over 200 advertising projects around the world, in addition to several feature films and two television series as executive producer. Logical and mathematical by nature but instinctive, Ménaïc Raoul knows how to guide the artists with whom she works with pleasure and creativity.
Wiley Townsend
Wiley Townsend is a Washington-born 3D animator who lives and works in Montréal. Wiley moved to British Columbia from Washington State to study character animation at the Vancouver Institute of Media Arts. Shortly after graduation, he began his career in Vancouver at Nitrogen Studios, as part of the animation team for the film Sausage Party. After working on the Netflix series Trollhunters and the animated adaptation of The Addams Family, Wiley moved to Montreal, where he contributed to multiple creatively engaging projects, including Marvel’s What If…? and the upcoming Netflix film Thelma the Unicorn. Always in search of new challenges, he has worked in film, television and the video game industry. He is currently the 3D animation supervisor at Tonic DNA.