Nettie Wild Filmmaker
Vancouver, British Columbia
Video by Lantern Films Inc. (Hân Phạm and Dave Rodden-Shortt)

Vancouver filmmaker Nettie Wild works collaboratively with her crews to explore documentary storytelling.  Together they have created feature documentaries which have brought audiences behind the front lines and headlines of revolutions and social change around the world. Notable works include A Rustling of Leaves: Inside the Philippine Revolution, A Place Called Chiapas and FIX: The Story of an Addicted City. Recent work has gained recognition for forging new frontiers in documentary cinema (KONELĪNE: our land beautiful won Best Canadian Feature at Hot Docs) as well as on the Web, in virtual reality, and in large-scale public installations (Uninterrupted digitally mapped images of migrating salmon onto Vancouver’s Cambie bridge.) She is currently co-directing with Scott Smith to create the video triptych, GO FISH to be released in 2023. Wild and her team have won the Prix du Public at the NFB’s 50th Anniversary Salute to the Documentary, and top honours at the American Film Festival, the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television, and the Berlin International Film Festival (Forum of New Cinema). Wild is a recipient of the Birks/TIFF Women in Film Award and has received an Honorary Doctorate from the Emily Carr University of Art + Design. 

Canada Wild Productions website

“Where documentary as a form has tended to explication, [Nettie Wild’s] work has focused on nuance, ambiguity, and the power of visuality to convey narratives of history, time, character, and place. [...] she is regarded as an icon of media arts for her courage in addressing difficult, intransigent issues in a way that illuminates their complexity while employing film’s potential as an artistic medium to engage the viewer’s imagination.”

Nominator: Alexandra Phillips, Associate Professor, Faculty of Culture and Community, Emily Carr University of Art and Design

“She is regarded as an icon of media arts for her courage in addressing difficult, intransigent issues.”

Selected works

The artist, in a red headscarf, smiles as she holds a camera beside her head. In front, a man in a balaclava holds an assault rifle.
Men, women and children pose on two levels of a wooden dwelling in a jungle setting. Some of them hold guns.
Three people stand near a wall of timbers arranged stockade-style. The two in the background are looking at a sheet of white paper.
A person with glossy black hair and a bandanna covering their nose and mouth holds a baby wearing a colourful dress and bonnet.
A closeup shows a man's face as he looks over the shoulder of a woman. Both are facing the viewer.
A steel hydro tower is seen against a backdrop of bright green northern lights and a starry sky. The horizon is a row of dark mountains.
Images of swimming fish are projected onto the bottom surface of a concrete bridge at night, creating the impression of an overhead aquarium.
Images of swimming fish are projected onto the bottom surface of a concrete bridge at night, creating the impression of an overhead aquarium.
A soft closeup image of fish eggs clinging to kelp is mirrored, repeated and spread horizontally over three panels.
A colourful view of a fishing boat seen from directly overhead is made symmetrical by mirroring one half of the image on the opposite side.

Discover the 2023 Winners

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