Emerging film fest fosters creativity, community

While Ontario and Quebec film artists have long spoken ambivalently about working in the shadow of a cultural superpower, Prairie film artists tend to express a different kind of marginality.

“Canada doesn’t hold a candle to Hollywood and all that, but Winnipeg really struggles in the shadow of the folks in Toronto who set the agenda and who get most of the funding,” Winnipeg filmmaker Kevin Nikkel recently told the Free Press.

Nikkel’s son Caden, also a filmmaker, is driven by a similar sentiment.

He’s the programmer behind the Manitoba Emerging Filmmakers Festival (also organized by Matthew Shoup, Kieran Peters and Taryn Edgeworth). The festival, now in its third year, will show dozens of films next weekend in the Exchange District.

“When you go to Toronto, or go somewhere else, you see there’s a lot of film festivals around. Here in Winnipeg, there’s not that many festivals that can really push you,” Caden Nikkel says.

“One thing that our festival can do is solidify that kind of community-based thing that I feel like Toronto (doesn’t) really have.”

The demand certainly seems to be there, as the festival has quickly taken off. Last year’s edition, its first with in-person crowds, was abuzz with young artists and hipsters, while this year features nearly 50 films over three days of programming at the Royal Albert Arms and Manitoba Museum Auditorium.

It’s ironic then, as Caden Nikkel observes, that so many of the submitted films should deal with themes of isolation.

“There’s a lot of films that are set in one place, like an apartment, and they’re dealing with either a breakup or just being lonely,” he says.

He suggests this focus may reflect a generational loss of everyday connectivity that hasn’t much improved post-pandemic, intensified by young people’s heavy social media use.

But he also gives a wryer explanation: many young filmmakers are operating with limited resources and still learning how to collaborate with others.

“People are just defaulting to making films by themselves. They don’t really understand … that having other people work on your films is really helpful,” he says.

MEFF facilitates the kind of networking through which relationships and careers in film are forged, not least of all by importing notable guests.

Local young film artists are likely pumped to see Isiah Medina’s name on the festival’s posters. The former Winnipegger — whose break-through 2015 film 88:88 enjoyed international accolades and premièred at the Locarno Film Festival — is in town from Toronto Saturday afternoon for a 2 p.m. panel discussion with Leslie Supnet at Film Training Manitoba.

“We got some funding to bring him out, to fly him out for the festival,” says Caden Nikkel. “He was just super knowledgeable and super inspiring … I think it’d be very good for emerging filmmakers to hear him talk.”

At 35, Medina is part of a growing number of millennial filmmakers who, like Rhayne Vermette and Matthew Rankin (whose Universal Language was Canada’s submission for Best International Feature Film at the 2025 Academy Awards), are having their independent films shown at some of the world’s biggest film festivals.

It’s at events like MEFF where, Caden Nikkel suggests, talents like these can first come into focus.

“There are a (number) of films that are pretty interesting … This is a great opportunity to see this new generation of filmmakers,” he says.

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