Tracey Deer

Mohawk filmmaker Tracey Deer's debut feature Beans, a coming-of-age story about a young Mohawk girl's experiences during the Oka Crisis, screened at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) to critical acclaim. Tracey was also honored with the prestigious TIFF Emerging Talent Award, presented to her by Ava DuVernay, and chosen as one of Variety's 10 Screenwriters to Watch. The searing performances and poignant storytelling in Beans earned it 2nd Runner Up for the TIFF People's Choice Award. Beans went on to win Best Canadian Film and Most Popular Canadian Narrative (Audience Choice) at the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF). Beginning her career in documentary, Tracey teamed up with Rezolution on feature documentaries One More River: The Deal that Split the Cree, Mohawk Girls, and Club Native, as well as the documentary series Working it Out Together, seasons I & II. This collaboration continued into fiction television with the critically acclaimed dramedy Mohawk Girls, which ran for five seasons and on which she shared showrunning duties with creative partner Cynthia Knight. Tracey's work has been honored with two Gemini Awards and numerous awards from multiple film festivals, including Hot Docs. She has worked with the CBC, the National Film Board (NFB), and numerous independent production companies throughout Canada in both documentary and fiction. She was nominated four years in a row for a Canadian Screen Award for Best Direction in a Comedy Series for Mohawk Girls and honored at TIFF 2016 as a recipient of the Birks Diamond Tribute Award. Tracey began production on Beans right after returning from LA, where she was a writing co-EP on season 3 of the Netflix/CBC series Anne with an E, working alongside showrunner Moira Walley-Beckett (an Emmy winner for Breaking Bad). Tracey wrote one episode of Anne with an E and co-wrote a second. Her projects in development include Inner City Girl, a feature about aboriginal gang life, with Original Pictures. Tracey strongly believes in giving back to the community. She chairs the board of directors of Women in View, a non-profit that promotes greater diversity and balance in Canadian media, from the standpoint of employment equity, creative authority and gender representation. In 2017, she was appointed to the board of directors of the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television. She has mentored emerging talent as leader of the Director Training Program at the imagineNATIVE Film & Media Arts Festival. She has also been a guest mentor at the National Screen Institute (NSI) New Indigenous Voices Program and a directing mentor for NSI's new IndigiDocs training course.