Archive Β· Blood in the Snow Film Festival Presents
Deadly Exposure Industry Conference Β· Nov 20β25 Β· Toronto
The BITS Horror Lab is a development program focused on facilitating business and production opportunities for genre (horror, sci-fi, action, thriller) scripted projects and short films by traditionally underrepresented BIPOC, women, and LGBTQ+ Canadian filmmakers and content creators. The Horror Lab supports 12 short-form film concepts or web series in development with the intention of moving these concepts into a feature film or web series project.
This program is less aimed at mentorship and more about access to business development. Participants will meet with top industry professionals during Blood in the Snow Film Festival (Nov 20β25, 2023), with access to all Deadly Exposure Industry Conference events.
2023 Horror Development Lab
Complimentary coffee and tea from Deadly Grounds Coffee (now Coffin Creek Coffee)
McCam Insurance with Rorie McIntosh
with Ryan Keller (Entertainment Lawyer / Producer)
William F. White with Greg Jeffs
with Taisa Dekker
with Hans Engel
Complimentary coffee and tea from Deadly Grounds Coffee (now Coffin Creek Coffee)
with Pino Halili
with Kirk Cooper
Please refer to your individual schedule for assigned times.
Please refer to your individual schedule for assigned times.
Selected Participants
π©Έ We are thrilled to announce the incredible filmmakers selected to participate in the 2023 Horror Development Lab.
Lu Asfaha is an award-winning Toronto filmmaker whose films cross genres to externalize the internal. In 2022 she was a resident of the CFC's Norman Jewison Film Program Director's Lab, where she wrote and directed short body horror Sight, which premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival in 2023. The East African-Canadian comedy web series Virgins! premiered on CBC Gem in 2023, of which Lu directed the episodes "God's Plan," "In My Feelings," and "Worst Behaviour." Her short horror film Fresh Meat screened at festivals across North America before broadcasting nationally on CBC's Canadian Reflections and winning Best Canadian Short at Regent Park Film Festival. Lu was BlueCat Screenplay's 2022 Feature Winner and Fellini Award recipient for her upcoming feature debut They Echo.
Snail Mail Media is an independent production company specializing in commercially viable, character-driven projects. SMM has produced over 30 short-form projects including CSA award-winning Being Black in Toronto, CBC's web-series Virgins!, and multi-award-winning short Promise Me. SMM's long-form development slate includes Yo, We're Dying (Telefilm supported feature), Let's Do This (queer comedy heist, Harold Greenberg Fund and Ontario Creates), and They Echo, which made history as the first script in 25 years of the BlueCat Screenplay Competition to win both Best Feature Screenplay and the Fellini Award.
Sonya is a filmmaker and video editor based in Victoria, BC. Together with collaborator Anik Desmarais-Spencer, they have produced, co-written, and co-directed four award-winning short films that have screened at festivals around the world, including their first short Baby Teeth, which won Outstanding BC Film at Short Circuit Pacific Rim Film Festival. Together, Sonya and Anik seek to explore difficult subjects using dark humour and absurdity grounded in reality. Sonya first developed an interest in visual storytelling as a teenager in the early 2000s and today has been the lead editor on a variety of short- and long-form projects, including three feature-length documentaries.
Anik is a film writer and director, collaborating with her creative partner Sonya since 2018. Together, they've brought four unique films to life, storytelling through a feminist and queer lens. Anik writes about issues and themes that are dear to her, often putting an exaggerated spin on them to provoke thought and challenge norms. Beyond the world of film, she works with children, focusing on improving accessible family services.
Jaden Curtis is a gay Toronto-based screenwriter and director with a keen interest in dark comedy and the humour in tragedy. He studied theatre and playwriting at York University and has written, directed, and produced three short films: The Last Lettucefest (Official Selection at the 2021 TIGLFF in Tampa Bay), Sleeping Dogs, and The Pros and Cons of Killing Yourself (Official Selection at the 2023 Hamilton Film Festival). He is the co-creator of online sketch series Ran & Jaden (partially developed with CBC Gem) and has recently signed a shopping agreement for a half-hour comedy series he created.
Mariah Owen is an award-winning, multi-hyphenate actor, creator, and filmmaker and founder of Webby-honoree production company GTE Productions. She is one of the youngest producers in the game, starting her company at just 21 years old. She's had films play at some of today's top festivals β SXSW, Sitges, Cannes β and her work can be found on Amazon, Apple, CBC Gem, and more.
Rylan Friday (Saulteaux Ojibway/Plains Cree/MΓ©tis) is a multidisciplinary award-winning director, curator, writer, and producer from Cote First Nation, Saskatchewan. With a passion for honest discourse surrounding LGBTQ2+ and Indigenous representation, Rylan infuses a sense of surrealism into his work while maintaining grounded realism to deliver authentic performances. He produced Portraits From a Fire, which earned him the Kevin Tierney Emerging Producer Award at the CMPA Indie Screen Awards during Prime Time Ottawa 2022, as well as the Leo Award for Best Motion Picture. Rylan has directed the critically acclaimed short Terror/Forming, which has screened at numerous festivals including VIFF, PDXFF, Fantastic Fest, VHSFF, MΔoriland, and imagineNATIVE. It won Best Short Horror Film at the 2023 London Independent Film Festival and Best BC Short at Vancouver Horror Show. He is currently developing the feature film follow-up, Terror/Rising.
Brenna Goodwin-McCabe is a versatile writer and director with a keen interest in media adaptation. In 2019, she was awarded a prestigious Social Sciences and Humanities Research grant for her thesis on Mary Shelley and Guillermo del Toro, completed for her Masters of English degree at the University of British Columbia. Her writing on science fiction, fantasy, and horror cinema has been presented at McGill, Dalhousie, and UBC. Brenna established Hearth Pictures in 2020 with her first horror short Half Full (2021), followed by The Still (2022). Half Full won honourable mention at the Vancouver Badass Film Festival (2022), and The Still premiered at the Toronto Indie Horror Festival (2022). She went on to write, direct, and executive produce the surreal horror short I Can't Go On (2023) with the Crazy8s organization. Brenna has also published 160 articles on film analysis through her blog youremindmeoftheframe.ca.
Constance Hilton is an award-winning emerging director with over a decade of industry experience working as a boom operator. Her first short film Mute (2019) was awarded Best Thriller at the Imagine This Women's Film Festival and enjoyed a festival run of eighteen selections, including Blood in the Snow (2021). Her follow-up short comedy The Good Word (2023) recently premiered at the Regina International Film Festival & Awards. A lifetime lover of visual storytelling, she also serves as VP Sound on the Executive Board of NABET 700-M UNIFOR since 2018.
Tricia Black is a multi-award-winning actor, comedian, writer, and songwriter. They hold two Canadian Screen Awards for their performances in Band Ladies and the hit animation Summer Memories. Tricia is an alumna of The Second City, and the Creative Director for Tweed & Company Theatre. They hold two Canadian Comedy Awards for Best Live Production and Best Ensemble. Screen credits include Baroness Von Sketch (CBC), What We Do In The Shadows (FX), Z-O-M B-I-E-S 3 (Disney), Bad Behind Bars: Jodi Arias (Lifetime/Cineflix), and Pretty Hard Cases (CBC).
Jessica Landry is a screenwriter, director, and Bram Stoker Award-winning author. Her projects have been developed through TIFF's inaugural Series Accelerator (Ghosts of Lakeland, 2022), NSI's Series Incubator (Ghosts of Lakeland, 2021β2022), the CFC/Netflix Project Development Accelerator (Catastrophe Queens, horror/comedy series, 2021), and Whistler Film Festival's Screenwriters Lab (My Only Sunshine, horror feature, 2020). She has several optioned projects in active development, including We Shall Be Monsters, a docuseries about women in horror, Body Count, a slasher feature, and The Night Belongs to Us, a feature adaptation of her Shirley Jackson Award-nominated novelette. She's written MOWs including List of a Lifetime (Critics' Choice Award nominated) and co-wrote the Rockie-nominated feature documentary True Story. She also wrote and directed several episodes of APTN's factual series 7th Gen.
Named "One to Watch" by Playback, Sam MacAdam is a Guyanese-Canadian film director and award-winning screenwriter. Sam's career started in film editing, a skill she now expertly wields as a filmmaker. Her diverse portfolio spans from gripping thriller/horrors to bold comedies. She's gained recognition from the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television's Warner Bros. Director Initiative and TIFF's Big Pitch Event. Her comedic short film Prom Night premiered at Just for Laughs and ranked as a top 5 finalist in Kevin Hart's LOL EAT MY SHORTS Showcase. She's directed on the comedy series Shelved under showrunner Anthony Q. Farrell (The Office) and wrote the story for The Nut Job 3, an animated film franchise starring Will Arnett. Upcoming projects include a feature horror film and an indie dark coming-of-age comedy.
Vanessa Magic is a writer/director whose work centres on loneliness and grief, viewed through an Afrofuturist and Afrosurrealist lens. She is an alumni of The Warner Media Discovery Access x Canadian Academy Writers Program '22 and Women In the Director's Chair '23. Her short film Oneironautic screened at Victoria Film Festival '21 and Reelworld Film Festival '21. Her short The Absurdity Of The Black Female Experience was selected for the Brooklyn Film Festival '23, where she won the Audience Choice Award for Best Experimental. Her most recent film The Future Above Us was shown at the Cannes Court MΓ©trage Short Film Market through Telefilm's Not Short on Talent Program and was selected at Reelworld Film Festival '23. Inspired by her dreams, Vanessa aims to create magical worlds with Black female protagonists.
Maude Michaud is a Montreal-based writer-director whose body of work includes over a dozen critically acclaimed short films which have played festivals around the world. Her debut feature Dys- (released as At The Door) had its World Premiere at the 2014 Fantasia International Film Festival where it won the Audience Award for Best Canadian Feature before snagging other audience awards and nominations on the festival circuit. She has since contributed to half a dozen anthology film projects and is currently in development on her second feature film Wild Side, produced by SlyKid (Turbo Kid). As a writer, she won second place in the 2018 Stage 32 Annual TV Writing Contest with her original TV pilot script Whipped. Her latest short film The Monster Inside My Head uses the horror genre to represent her personal struggle with Tourette Syndrome.
Ava Maria Safai is a Canadian-Iranian artist hailing from Vancouver. A Dean's List graduate from UBC's BFA in Acting program and the current artistic director of The Harlequin Theatre Society, she is also an accomplished musician and singer-songwriter with over 40 original songs in her catalogue. Recent direction credits include ZIP (Crazy8s & The Harlequin Theatre Society; first standing ovation in Crazy8s history), I Killed Maddie Forbes, Hamlet, and INHUMAN/E. She is the proud recipient of many awards, including the Don S. Williams Grant and the Evelyn Jasiulko Harden Scholarship in Theatre.
Nicco Graham is a Filipino-Canadian actor interested in telling inclusive stories, with a special focus on multiracial folk who live in a world divided by colour. He has an immense passion for film & TV and will be actively pursuing work in this field. Past work includes ZIP (Crazy8s x The Harlequin Theatre Society; Lead Producer) and INHUMAN/E, I Killed Maddie Forbes, and Hamlet (The Harlequin Theatre Society, Producer & Actor).
Heyishi Zhang (she/her) is an award-winning filmmaker interested in telling chaotic and complex stories about subjects beyond the margins. Her most notable project is Gay Mean Girls Seasons 1 + 2, an autofictional digital series she created/directed. Both seasons premiered at TIFF Next Wave and were distributed by Shaftesbury and Revry. Season 2 won a Golden Sheaf Award at Yorkton Film Festival and "Best Drama" at Stareable LA, along with 20+ other nominations. The project originated from her viral short film (same title, 2015) with over 4 million views online. Heyishi is a Telefilm Talent to Watch recipient and worked on CTV's Shelved. She attended Toronto Metropolitan University's Film Studies program, where she co-founded and was the president of the TMU Alliance of Women Filmmakers.
2023 Horror Development Lab
| March 1, 2023 | Applications open β Closed |
| October 1, 2023 | Final application deadline |
| October 15, 2023 | Notification date β accepted applicants informed |
| November 20β25, 2023 | Horror Development Lab in downtown Toronto. Three days of development and three days of intensive Deadly Exposure events (panels and round tables). Your Lab pass also includes a screening pass to all films in the evenings. |
| JanuaryβMarch 2024 | A series of one-on-one meetings (online) with your assigned Industry Lead for follow-up. |
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