Robin McKenna is an award-winning director, producer and writer with over two decades of experience in documentary filmmaking.  Her feature documentary GIFT, a inspired by Lewis Hyde’s classic bestseller The Gift, opened in theatres across the US and Canada in 2019 (“Elliptical, poetic, and visually arresting.” –The Boston Globe). Her newest film Thanadoula, a short animated documentary co-produced with the NFB, will premiere in 2020. 

Robin grew up in Montreal, and began making films with the celebrated Radio-Canada series La Course destination monde. Her film The Great War Experience won Yorkton Film Festival’s Founders’ Award in 2007. She has directed documentary series for networks in the US and Canada, and her cinematography credits include City of Borders (Berlinale, Hot Docs 2009) and The Take with Naomi Klein (AFI Best Documentary 2004). In 2018 she directed a short film on 16mm with legendary actress Geneviève Bujold, produced by the NFB for the Governor General’s Awards for the Performing Arts. She is currently finishing Medicine, a feature-length documentary about ayahuasca, medicine and healing, with Dr. Gabor Maté.

She is an alumnus of Hot Docs’ Doc Lab, and has been a filmmaker-mentor in indigenous communities with Wapikoni Mobile. She is fluent in French and Spanish, and has worked in Latin America, Russia, India, Kenya, Israel and Palestine. She loves creative collaboration, and welcomes new projects.