Bretten Hannam is aCanadian screenwriter and film director.[1]
ATwo-Spirit,non-binaryMi'kmaq person, Hannam was born and raised inNova Scotia.[1] Educated at theNova Scotia College of Art and Design andDalhousie University, they made a number of short films in their early career; the most noted of these,Deep End, premiered at the Atlantic Film Festival in 2011[2] and was included in the short film compilationBoys on Film 9: Youth in Trouble.[3]
Their 2015 feature film,North Mountain, premiered at theAtlantic Film Festival in 2015 before going into limited commercial release in 2018.[4]
In 2018, they participated inNow and Then, an exhibition of works byLGBTQ artists in conjunction with theCanadian Lesbian and Gay Archives.[5] Their contribution was the short filmElmiteskuatl, an interrogation of the complex relationship betweenFirst Nations peoples and colonialist conceptions of archives andmuseums.[5]
Their most recent short film,Wildfire, was produced with the assistance of theWhistler Film Festival's Aboriginal Filmmaker Fellowship,[6] and premiered atBFI Flare in 2019. A feature film expansion ofWildfire, titledWildhood, was funded byTelefilm Canada in June 2019,[7] and premiered at the2021 Toronto International Film Festival.[8] The film received sixCanadian Screen Award nominations at the10th Canadian Screen Awards in 2022, including nods for Hannam in bothBest Director andBest Original Screenplay.[9]
In 2020, Hannam received a grant from theInside Out Film and Video Festival's Re:Focus Emergency Relief Fund for the completion of a short documentary film titledWalqwin, about two-spirit culture in theWabanaki Confederacy.[10]
Hannam was named the winner of the$10,000Toronto Film Critics Association'sJay Scott Prize for emerging filmmakers in February 2022.[11]
Hannam's filmAt the Place of Ghosts (Sk+te’kmujue’katik) premiered in thePlatform Prize program at the2025 Toronto International Film Festival.[12] It was subsequently screened at the2025 Atlantic International Film Festival, where it won the Gordon Parsons Award for Best Atlantic Canadian Feature.[13]
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
