Camille Hollett-French
Camille Hollett-French is an award-winning multi-hyphenate filmmaker and actor. Her films have screened at more than 40 festivals globally and her short film 'FREYA' won five of the nine Leo Awards that it was nominated for, including Best VFX, Best Direction and Best Short Film. She is the winner of the £20,000 Craghoppers Film Prize, the largest cash prize for a short, for her first film 'Hush Little Baby.' It was part of the short film series 'Her Story (In Three Parts)' which she wrote, directed, produced and starred in. It was shot across Canada, in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, in less than a year. Two of Camille's films have premiered at Slamdance and she's an alum of two of Canada's premiere incubator labs for her feature film 'Man In Pieces,' The Whistler Film Festival's Producers Lab and Women In the Director's Chair. Camille is in post-production for her next short film, the Canada Council for the Arts-funded 'Spark' to be released in Fall of 2022.
Camille was born in Montreal to a father from Newfoundland and a mother from Trinidad. She moved to Toronto as a teenager and now resides in Vancouver. She's appeared in shows 'The Twilight Zone,' 'Motherland: Fort Salem,' 'Nancy Drew' and 'Valley of the Boom' playing the real-life person Tara Hernandez, a manager at Silicon Valley's 90s tech company Netscape, the famed startup responsible for Mozilla Firefox.
Her short film ENDOMIC was made for the Symbiosis Filmmaking Competition through Imagine Science (NYC), whereby six filmmakers are chosen worldwide to partner with a scientist to make a film in eight days from concept to completion. Camille and research scientist Ipek Ensari's film is "just another run-of-the-mill biting feminist satire" about endometriosis, an enigmatic "women's" disease that affects 200 million people worldwide. It premiered at Slamdance 2021 for the first Unstoppable program for filmmakers with visible and non-visible disabilities.
In 2017, Camille began making 'Her Story (In Three Parts).' It was a finalist for the Cayle Chernin Awards, named after the late Cayle Chernin and designed for female artists in the new media and theatre communities transitioning to other roles in the industry. She then made her first film, the second instalment of the series, 'No. 2: Hush Little Baby,' through the YEAA Shorts program at ACTRA Toronto, which was sponsored by Reel World Film Festival and William F. Whites.
'No. 2: Hush Little Baby' won Best Debut at the Discover Film Awards in London, where it went on to win the Craghopper's Film Prize of £20,000. The same festival later awarded 'No. 3: In the Absence of Angels' with Best Director and Best International Drama and 'FREYA' with Best International Sci-Fi. The script for 'No. 2: Hush Little Baby' was the first short film script to win LiveRead/LA.
Her films have screened at festivals including but not limited to Slamdance (as the only Canadian production in their inaugural Episodes program and and then for the first Unstoppable program), Fantasia (Audience Choice for Best Canadian Short), The Awareness Film Fest (Special Jury Innovation Award twice), Vancouver Short Film Festival (Best Female Director, Audience Choice), Oslo Independent Film Festival (Best Writer), Canadian Film Festival (Special Jury Award), Women's Film Festival (Best First Time Filmmaker), Rhode Island, Palm Springs ShortsFest, Newport Beach Film Fest, Aesthetica (UK), Underwire (UK) and Female Eye Film Festival, where 'FREYA' screened and the entire 'Her Story (In Three Parts)' series as part of their inaugural International Women's Day event at the TIFF Lightbox Theatre in Toronto. 'Her Story (In Three Parts)' was a finalist for the Lindalee Tracey Awards, an award presented through Hot Docs for emerging Canadian filmmakers making films in the spirit of the late Lindalee Tracey.
Camille is an alum of the Women In the Director's Chair Story & Leadership program and the Whistler Film Festival's Producers Lab where she began developing her first feature film that she will be writing and directing, 'Man In Pieces.' She is the recipient of the NFB's Filmmaker Assistance Program finishing fund for 'FREYA,' a 'cautionary comedy' funded by the Harold Greenberg Fund $20,000 short film program. Camille was also a finalist for the MPPIA Short Film Award at the Whistler Film Festival.
Camille was the One-Minute Round winner of the Monologue Slam LA's first competition, for which she is now a sponsor providing a travel bursary to a participant to make it to LA to compete. Before leaving Toronto, Camille facilitated a group called 'The Dead Actor's Society' whereby she invited professionals in the industry (coaches, directors, actors) to guest teach acting classes.
After getting kicked out of theatre school, Camille received a diploma in journalism because she missed learning. Writing was her first foray into the arts as a child and film was her first love. As such, she'll always pursue the making of movies by whatever means she can. She and her chef partner drove from Toronto to Vancouver in an old renovated shortbus then lived in it for two years with their cat so that they could fund their film series.
