Jennifer Baichwal

Director & actor · born 1 January 1965 · Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Jennifer Baichwal, director and producer, was born in Montréal and came to documentary filmmaking through studies in philosophy and theology at her hometown’s McGill University. She debuted 15 years ago with Looking You in the Back of the Head. Her first feature-length film, Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles (1998), was screened at a number of festivals and took Best Biography at the 1999 Hot Docs festival. In 1998 she and partner Nick de Pencier founded Mercury Films, and there she has produced, among other films, her own works The Holier It Gets and The True Meaning of Pictures, as well as the multiply-awarded festival favorite Manufactured Landscapes (about the work of artist Edward Burtynsky), one of the most noteworthy Canadian documentaries of the decade.

Where to start: Fire Weather.