Damon D'Oliveira is a veteran producer responsible for bringing to screen some of Canada’s most critically and commercially successful films and television (Rude, The Grizzlies, The Book of Negroes, Wildhood). An early champion of diversity, equity and inclusion both in front and behind the camera, Damon’s career has focused producing content that centered underrepresented, racialized and LGBTQIA2S+ voices. His latest film, Brother by Clement Virgo, world premiered at TIFF 2022 to strong critical acclaim and has played festivals worldwide including Busan, Sao Paulo and BFI London Film Festivals. A recent member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Damon is also the vice-chair of the CMPA and won the Established Producer Indie Screen Award in 2022.

After working in distribution for 5 years, Luc Déry founded production company micro_scope in 2002. The company has produced over 25 feature films including Gabrielle (Louise Archambault), Congorama, C’est pas moi, je le jure, and My Salinger Year (Philippe Falardeau), Continental, un film sans fusil, and Tu Dors Nicole (Stéphane Lafleur), Inch’Allah (Anaïs Barbeau Lavalette), Drunken Birds (Ivan Grbovic) and this year’s Viking. All of these films have premiered in major film festivals (Cannes, Berlin, Venice, TIFF and Locarno) and two, Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies and Philippe Falardeau’s Monsieur Lazhar were nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the Academy Awards.

Sylvain Corbel founded Metafilms Inc in 2003. As of this day, he produced more than 25 short and 25 feature films. Among others, Maxime Giroux’s Félix et Meira (2014) won the Best Canadian Film Award at TIFF, Juste la fin du monde, (Xavier Dolan, 2016), won the Grand Jury Prize at Festival de Cannes. In 2022, he presented Un été comme ça (Denis Côté) in Competition at the 72nd Berlinale, Rojek (Zaynê Akyol) in Competition at the 53rd Vision du Réel, Falcon Lake (Charlotte Le Bon) at the 54th Director’s Fortnight in Cannes.

Liz Shorten has been working to build capacity in the film, television and digital media sectors for the past 25 years. In her role as chief operating officer at the CMPA, Liz leads staff and oversees organizational operations across the association’s offices in Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver, and works to implement the CMPA’s corporate strategic plan. Liz previously held senior positions at the Ontario Film Development Corporation (Ontario Creates), British Columbia Film (Creative BC), and CBC Television.

Liz was recently named one of BC’s top 500 Business Leaders by Business in Vancouver and “Woman of the Year” by Women in Film and Television Vancouver in recognition of her leadership role in the film and television industry.