Peter Findlay

Peter D. Findlay is an award-winning director, writer and producer with a passion for storytelling and a strong sense of social justice. A member of the Directors Guild of Canada, he holds degrees from York University and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. He is also a member of the boards of the DOC Institute, the Documentary Organization of Canada, and the Durham Region International Film Festival. Since leaving his position as a staff producer at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in 2000, Findlay's work as a freelancer has been broadcast internationally on CTV, PBS, ZDF/Arte, SBS Australia, the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, History TV, and back again at the CBC, among others. He has twice been nominated for Gemini Awards, winning for best sports documentary program in 2003. He has won 3 awards in three different categories at the Houston World Fest Film Festival, as well as co-winning a Canadian Science Writers Award while on staff at CBC's investigative flagship show, 'The Fifth Estate'. His films have also been finalists for a Canadian Association of Journalists award, a HotDocs award for best social or political documentary, and at the New York Film and Television Festival. in 2011, Findlay's work as writer and director on "Raw Opium: Pain, Pleasure, Profits" garnered his film's selection to the prestigious Economist Film Project and a screening on PBS' "Newshour". In 2015 he produced his first self-written and directed short drama, "The Bear", which was screened at the Toronto International Short Film Festival and the Yellowknife and the Fort McMurray International Film Festivals in 2015. It also took top honours for direction and cinematography at Fort McMurray and was selected for the 2016 Austin and Edinburgh Short Film Festivals, as well as the 2016 Atlantic Film Festival. More recently, Findlay was the director, writer and and executive producer on the feature documentary "Company Town" in partnership with Nomad Films. "Company Town" is the dramatic inside story of the fight by the autoworkers of Oshawa to keep General Motors from shuttering its plants at the cost of 5,000 lost union jobs and was broadcast on CBC-TV's "POV" documentary series on October 10, 2020. It was also selected for competition at the Durham Region International Film Festival in October, 2020, winning best regional film and more recently won best Canadian film, best-in-festival, and the Miguel Cifuentes Radical Change Award at the 2020 Canadian Labour International Film Festival. In March, 2021, "Company Town" was also nominated for four Canadian Screen Awards: best editing in a documentary, best original music (non-fiction), best director for a documentary series, and best documentary program. The film was also an official selection at the Belleville Downtown Docfest, Northwestfest in Edmonton, the Ottawa Canadian Film Festival, the Freep Film Festival in Detroit, the Workers Unite Film Festival in New York City - where "Company Town" won best feature documentary - and most recently at the 2022 Mayworks Festival of Working People and the Arts.