Eisha Marjara

With a background in photography, Canadian and Quebec filmmaker Eisha Marjara first drew attention with the witty and satirical The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1994), but It was her feature NFB docudrama Desperately Seeking Helen (1999) that established her a groundbreaking filmmaker. The film received the Critic's Choice Award at the Locarno Film Festival and the Jury Prize at the München Dokumentarfilm Festival. It has been called it "one of the most auspicious film debuts in the Canadian scene." Venus (2017) is her first fiction feature. Venus received the AWFJ EDA Award for the best female-directed feature film at the Whistler Film Festival. Her German-Canadian The Tourist (2006) was nominated as best short at Toronto's Female Eye Film Festival and transgender drama House for Sale (2012) received multiple awards at various festivals. Her essay and photo series on the Air India tragedy of flight 182 entitled 'Remember me Nought' was featured in Descant magazine. She has also authored Faerie, a novel about a teenager struggling with anorexia. Faerie received rave reviews in Canadian and American press, including a star review in US Publisher's Weekly. Critics have called her young adult novel, "polished and poetic", "a page-turner," "Marjara, writing in Lila's affecting voice, delicately captures the deep insecurities of teenhood, the pressure of trying to fit into one ideal of beauty, and the complexity of anorexia with lovely, flowing prose, underscoring the devastating effects that mental illness can have on an entire family." She is developing Calorie, produced by Joe Balass of Compass Productions.