ROBIN MCKENNA

Robin McKenna is a filmmaker specializing in creative, artful documentaries. GIFT, a feature-length doc inspired by Lewis Hyde’s The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World, was released theatrically in 2019 (“Elliptical, poetic, and visually arresting” –The Boston Globe) and nominated for the Allan King Award for Excellence in Documentary, Director’s Guild of Canada Awards.

Her short animated doc Thanadoula (2020), co-produced with the NFB, won an honourable mention for Best Short Film at Ottawa’s prestigious International Animation Festival. Other short films include Genevieve Bujold, Art = Vie, a lyrical portrait on 16mm for Canada’s Governor-General Awards for the Performing Arts (2019), and Weather, for Greetings from Isolation, an artists’ collective film series during the pandemic (2020).

The Jungle Prescription, following doctors working with ayahuasca to treat addiction, aired on CBC’s The Nature of Things (Golden Sheaf nomination for Best Science, Nature or Technology program, 2012). She has worked as a filmmaker-mentor in Indigenous communities with Wapikoni Mobile, and done cinematography for films including The Take, with Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis in Argentina (2004). She lives outside Montréal, Canada.