September 16-23, 2026
Halifax, Nova Scotia
The Gordon Parsons Award for Best Atlantic Feature
Presented by Equifilm, the winner of this award will receive $25,000 equipment credit from EQUIFILM + One (1) ACCT Membership
2026 AIFF Atlantic Awards
Award for Best Atlantic Director
Presented by Equifilm, the winner of this award will receive $25,000 equipment credit from EQUIFILM
David Renton Award for Outstanding Performance for Actor in a feature film
Presented by Sky Talent Group, the winner of this award will receive a $1,000 cash prize.
The Michael Weir Award for Best Atlantic Screenwriter
Presented by Equifilm, the winner of this award will receive One (1) ACCT Membership
Joan Orenstein Award for Outstanding Performance for Actress in a feature film
Presented by Sky Talent Group, the winner of this award will receive a $1,000 cash prize.
James MacSwain Award for Singular Voice
Presented by AFCOOP and CFAT, the winner of this award will receive $2,000 in-kind equipment rentals by AFCOOP + $2,000 in-kind support by CFAT, free membership to Visual Arts Nova Scotia and 6 Punch Pass from Carbon Arc Independent Cinema ($60 value).
The James MacSwain Award for Singular Voice recognizes a filmmaker, at any stage in their career, who demonstrates a singular creative and unique vision in their style of filmmaking. James MacSwain was a Nova Scotia filmmaker, animator, artist, and community activist whose inventive and unconventional approach to filmmaking reflected his boundless curiosity and distinctive creative vision. His work embraced rawness, experimentation, humour, and a spirit of possibility. This award honours his legacy by celebrating filmmakers who, like James, forge their own creative path and expand the possibilities of the medium.
Best Atlantic Cinematographer
Presented by Equifilm, the winner of this award will receive $25,000 Equipment credit by EQUIFILM
Best Atlantic Original Score
Best Atlantic Short
Presented by Sunbelt and 902 Post, the winner of this award will receive $10,000 in-kind equipment rental by SUNBELT + $1,500 in-kind services by 902 POST
Best Atlantic Editor
Award for Best Atlantic Documentary
Presented by Lunenburg Doc Fest, the winner of this award will receive Lunenburg Doc Fest - two full 2026 festival passes including galas ($320 value)
Best Atlantic Short Documentary
Presented by DOC Atlantic and 902 P02 Post, the winner of this award will receive $500 cash and one year membership by DOC Atlantic + $1,500 in-kind services by 902 POST.
2026 Atlantic Jury
Atlantic Features Jury
Neil Macdonald | The Film Commissioner and Director of Media Development for the Yukon Government. Born and raised in the Yukon, he began making movies as a young boy. Neil is an alumnus of the UBC Film Program and the National Screen Institute. With over twenty years’ experience in film and television production Neil has worked as a Producer, Director, Cinematographer, and Gaffer. His credits include A.R.C.H.I.E. 2, GOLD RUSH, SKYMASTER DOWN, NANCY DREW, TRON LEGACY, and the TWILIGHT SAGA to name a few.
Nicole Steeves | An award-winning actor, costume designer, and producer. She produced Tara Thorne’s debut feature film, Compulsus, which was a recipient of Telefilm’s Talent to Watch funding, as well as Thorne’s sophomore film, Lakeview. Lakeview is enjoying an international festival run, screening at festivals including BFI Flare London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival, Roze Filmdagen Amsterdam, and Queer Screen Mardi Gras Film Festival in Sydney, Australia. Compulsus signed a distribution deal with Vortex Media and had a limited theatrical release after a robust film festival circuit. Nicole is one of the five winners of the national screenwriting competition From Our Dark Side. She was also the winner of the Women in Film and Television Pitch Competition for her project Getaway and is an alumnus of the Women in the Director’s Chair mentoring program.
Wanda Taylor | An award-winning author, producer, screenwriter and professor. She is a former CBC-TV producer and has also written hundreds of hours of content over the last two decades. She has worked on unscripted series such as MasterChef Canada, The Next Star, and Canada’s Got Talent, and has written and produced documentaries with a focus on bringing east coast stories to the world, including Still Here: A Journey to Triumph. Wanda has also worked various roles on feature films, including Across the Line, Poor Boys Game, and Black Cop. As a script editor and consultant, she has helped to usher countless film and television projects into production, including the Bell-Fibe series Things Like These (Cry Pretty Media, 2026). As a professor teaching across journalism, film, television and book writing for over 15 years, Wanda’s passion also lies in training up the next generations of aspiring creators and storytellers.
She is the author of 14 books, two of which were option for film. Her award-winning book, The Grover School Pledge was the 2024 recipient of the Northern Lights Book Award in the US; an award that honors children’s literature around the world of exceptional merit. She has three more titles set for release between 2026 and 2028 and is currently in production on a feature documentary for CBC’s Absolutely Canadian. She is also in development on an exciting slate of scripted film and television projects. Wanda has won many awards for her wide body of work, including the prestigious Women of Excellence Award for Arts and Culture.
Atlantic Shorts Jury
Yung Chang | For more than two decades, Yung Chang has explored the human consequences of social, political, and economic change through documentary cinema. His acclaimed films include Up the Yangtze (2007), China Heavyweight (2012), The Fruit Hunters (2013), This Is Not a Movie (2019), and Wuhan Wuhan (2021), which received an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary.
A graduate of the Sundance Institute's Screenwriters and Directors Labs and TIFF Writers' Studio, Chang makes his fiction debut with The Highway, which premiered at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival. He is currently developing his first narrative feature, Eggplant.
Millefiore Clarkes | An award-winning filmmaker and editor from Canada’s smallest province, Epekwitk/Prince Edward Island. She is committed to making work that speaks to place, community and the human relationship to nature. Through her company One Thousand Flowers Productions she produces a variety of media work: documentaries, drama, experimental shorts, music videos, and video installations. She received the 2019 DOC Institute’s Vanguard Award and WIFT-AT’s Wave Award in 2024. Her films have screened at festivals internationally and been broadcast nationally. She has directed four documentaries with The National Film Board of Canada and is currently in production on two independent feature docs. She finds her greatest joy in the edit suite where she weaves imagery and sound more by instinct than outline.
Maria Gracia Turgeon | A Canadian producer and two-time Academy Award nominee Maria Gracia Turgeon recently joined forces with veteran producer Pierre Even to launch the new production company 12PM. Their first collaboration, Juan Andrés Arango’s Donde Comienza el Río (L’Atelier Cannes), will be premiering at TIFF 2026..
She also co-founded Midi La Nuit with producer/director Annick Blanc, where she produced acclaimed short films such as Marc-Antoine Lemire’s PRE-DRINK (Best Canadian Short, TIFF 2017), Jérémy Comte’s Fauve (Oscar nominee, Sundance Special Jury Award 2018, Telluride 2018), and Meryam Joobeur’s Brotherhood (Oscar nominee, Best Canadian Short, TIFF 2018; Sundance 2019).
In 2024, her first two feature under Midi La Nuit films premiered: Annick Blanc’s debut Hunting Daze at SXSW, and Meryam Joobeur’s debut Who Do I Belong To in competition at the Berlinale.
Charles Wahl | A writer and director whose work has screened internationally at festivals including SXSW, TIFF, Palm Springs International ShortFest, Clermont-Ferrand, Melbourne, Aspen and Hamptons.
Alongside more than 15 years directing commercial work internationally, Charles has built an award-winning body of short films. The Mohel won Best Live Action Short at Palm Springs International ShortFest, while Paper was a Vimeo Staff Pick, selected by Short of the Week and won Best Short Film at the 2025 Screen Nova Scotia Awards.
Charles has co-created and produced two seasons of Normal Scotia for Bell Fibe TV1, and is in prep for the feature film Sound & Fury.
James MacSwain Award for Singular Voice Jury
Eryn Foster | An interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and educator based in K’jipuktuk/Halifax. In 2023, she released her first documentary, Celestial Queer, an award-winning feature about James MacSwain, an iconic Nova Scotia artist, animator, and community activist. Directed and produced by Foster and her collaborator, Sue Johnson, the film has screened at festivals across Atlantic Canada and beyond.
Foster has also exhibited her visual artwork over the past two decades at numerous artist-run centres, public galleries, and museums, as well as through ongoing exhibitions at Hermes Gallery in Halifax, where she is a member of the collective.
Since 2005, she has been working as a regular part-time faculty at NSCAD University, teaching in the departments of Foundation Studies and Fine Arts. Over the past two decades, she has served on numerous arts boards and committees and has most recently joined the Lunenburg Doc Festival.
Christopher Spencer-Lowe | An award-winning filmmaker, media artist and performer of unusual works in public. He has projected film loops at raves, played in various bands, performed in media, movement and art performances, designed sound for films, worked as a freelance media consultant and program coordinator, created media installations, advocated for arts locally and nationally and taught filmmaking to over a two thousand people while drawing awards and recognition for his short films. CSL led the development and management of The AMP LAB, a new 5k film scanning lab in a cooperation with AFCOOP and the Public Archives of Nova Scotia. At this time he also developed and directed an aleatoric (semi-randomized) feature length musical performance documentary for the Upstream Music Association. This web based experience is unique for every new viewer and features six new compositions by up and coming and established Nova Scotian composers. Throughout all of this, CSL remains an active member of the Halifax filmmaking and arts community, teaching film and media art, serving on various boards and committees and mentoring film artists.
Lulu Keating | As a filmmaker for forty years, Lulu Keating won awards and her work has been shown in festivals around the world. As a writer, her literary work has been published in Geist Magazine, Parallelogram, The Globe and Mail, North of Ordinary and other publications. In her hometown, Dawson City Yukon, the prize for her winning story was a gold nugget.
Splinter and Shard, Keating’s collection of short stories, was published by ECW Press. She has been attending writers’ conferences in Greece, Mexico and across Canada, reading from her work and teaching.
Keating’s first novel, Klondike Codfish, is about a young woman from the Maritimes who becomes stranded in the Yukon. A second manuscript of short stories, The Mother Born, is seeking publication. Also in development is a picture book for adults, Muffintop Molly, about the misadventures of an eccentric older woman. Keating is working on three novels: Astrid's Vision, Chasing Demons and Tabitha’s Erotic Adventure. She continues to take self-financed annual retreats to Greece to focus on her writing.