Jennifer Baichwal

Jennifer Baichwal has been directing and producing documentaries for 25 years. Among other films, installations and lens-based projects, she has made ten feature documentaries which have played all over the world and won multiple awards nationally and internationally.

Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles won an International Emmy in 1999.

The Holier It Gets, a documentary filmed in Canada and India, won Best Cultural and Best Independent Canadian Documentary at Hot Docs, 2000, and won Geminis for best writing, directing, and editing in a documentary series.

Manufactured Landscapes won TIFF’s Best Canadian Film, Al Gore’s Reel Current Award and the Toronto Film Critics Association prize for Best Canadian Film in 2006. It played theatrically in over 15 territories worldwide, and was named as one of 150 Essential Works In Canadian Cinema History by TIFF in 2016.

Act of God, about the metaphysical effects of being struck by lightning, opened the Hot Docs Film Festival, May 2009.

Payback, an adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s Massey Lectures produced by Ravida Din and the National Film Board, premiered in competition at the Sundance Film Festival in Jan. 2012, released in the U.S. and Canada.

The feature documentary Watermark, made with Edward Burtynsky and Nicholas de Pencier, premiered at TIFF2013, released in Canada and won the Toronto Film Critics Association prize: Best Canadian Film in 2014. It has since been released in eleven countries.

Most recently, Baichwal and de Pencier were co-directors of Long Time Running, a feature documentary on the Tragically Hip’s 2016 summer tour. The documentary premiered at TIFF2017, and was subsequently released by Elevation Pictures, broadcast by Bell and Netflix.

Baichwal’s most recent collaboration with de Pencier and Edward Burtynsky is The Anthropocene Project. It includes a touring exhibition which debuted at the Art Gallery of Ontario and National Gallery of Canada and is currently being exhibited in Bologna at MAST until Dec. 2019. The feature documentary film Anthropocene: The Human Epoch premiered at TIFF2018, played Sundance and the Berlinale, was released in Canada and will be released in the U.S. by Kino Lorber in Sept. 2019, among other territories around the world. The film won the Toronto FilmCritics Association prize for Best Canadian Film in 2018. The Anthropocene Project also includes an art book published by Steidl, and an educational program in partnership with the Royal Can. Geographical Society.

Baichwal sits on the board of Swim Drink Fish Canada, and is a member of the Ryerson University School of Image Arts Advisory Council. She has been a Director of the Board of the Toronto International Film Festival since 2016, and is passionate ambassador of their Share Her Journey campaign, a five-year commitment to increasing participation, skills, and opportunities for women behind and in front of the camera.