In 2018, after 15 years at the NFB, Nathalie Cloutier was appointed Executive Producer of the French Program’s Documentary Studio. She has always championed a flexible creative process and supported a diverse group of auteurs, an approach that has yielded a number of bold endeavours. At the NFB, she’s produced several interactive projects, including Here at Home: In Search of the Real Cost of Homelessness, a multi-award-winning website about homelessness, and The Hole Story Interactive, a website that accompanied the feature-length doc of the same name by Richard Desjardins and Robert Monderie. In addition to her work on interactive productions, Nathalie has produced and co-produced numerous feature-length documentaries that have garnered attention both in Canada and internationally. They include The Amina Profile by Sophie Deraspe (Sundance 2015), Gulîstan, Land of Roses by Zaynê Akyol (Doc Alliance Selection Award, Locarno 2016), Freelancer on the Front Lines by Santiago Bertolino (closing film at RIDM 2016), and A Delicate Balance by Christine Chevarie-Lessard (Women Inmates’ Award, RIDM 2018). She also produced Waseskun, by Steve Patry, a Best Feature Length Documentary nominee at the 2017 Canadian Screen Awards. In collaboration with Nadagam Films of Val d’Or, in Quebec’s Abitibi-Témiscamingue region, in 2018 she launched the 5 Shorts Project, for which five local female directors each made a very short documentary for the web. Her most recent productions are Kenbe La: Jusqu’à la Victoire by Will Prosper, Le fond de l’air by Simon Beaulieu and Far from Bashar by Pascal Sanchez.
Nathalie Cloutier first came to work at the NFB as a production coordinator in 2003. After completing the documentary program at the Institut national de l’image et du son (INIS) in Montreal, she returned to the NFB as a producer at the Documentary Studio in 2010. Earlier in her career, she studied arts and literature and collaborated on several theatrical productions. Her experience directing short films for the 1998–1999 season of the Radio-Canada television program Course destination monde inspired her to pursue a career in film.