May 15, 2016 – Edmonton – National Film Board of Canada (NFB)

Co-written and co-directed by Edmontonians Heidi Janz and Eva Colmers, the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) short documentary We Regret to Inform You… has added to its list of awards, winning the EDA Award for Best Female-Directed Documentary Short at the DOXA Documentary Film Festival on May 14―an award presented by the Alliance of Women Film Journalists at DOXA for the first time.

Produced by Bonnie Thompson and executive produced by David Christensen for the NFB’s North West Studio in Edmonton, this 11-minute film was a double Rosie Award winner last week at the Alberta Film & Television Awards, winning Best Direction for a Documentary Short and Best Editing for a Documentary. Presented by the Alberta Media Production Industries Association to honour the best of Alberta’s production in the screen industry, the Rosies were announced in Calgary on May 8.  

We Regret to Inform You… offers an unsentimental and unapologetic look at what it means to be both “disabled” and “productive” as it follows Dr. Janz―award-winning playwright, accomplished academic and self-described “crip”―through her everyday life. It will be featured next in Saskatchewan, at the Yorkton Film Festival, taking place May 26–29.

Quick Facts

Eva Colmers

Eva Colmers is an independent filmmaker who has written, directed and produced a dozen award-winning short films in the dramatic, documentary and experimental genres. Her credits include 2.57k, Granny Baby, The Weightless Traveller and End of the Rope. For the NFB, she has written and directed two long-format documentaries, The Elder Project (2010) and The Enemy Within (2003).

Heidi Janz

Dr. Heidi Janz is a writer/playwright whose most-recently produced plays include: Voices at Dying, Dying to be Heard, produced in 2006 for the 16th International Congress on the Care of the Terminally Ill; and The Book of Jobes, first produced by Kompany Family Theatre and Lone Sparrow Productions for the 2011 Edmonton Fringe Theatre Festival. Janz is an adjunct professor with the John Dossetor Health Ethics Centre and the Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Alberta, specializing in the field of Disability Ethics. She was named Global TV’s Woman of Vision in May 2013.

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Associated Links

DOXA Documentary Film Festival
Alliance of Women Film Journalists
Alberta Media Production Industries Association
Yorkton Film Festival

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