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Winnipeg\u2019s Sidney Phommarath is making a name for herself with her documentaries.<\/p>\n
A film graduate of the University of Winnipeg who specializes in human rights narratives, Phommarath\u2019s latest documentary is Dear Nya, which showcases her visit to her ancestral homeland of Laos.<\/p>\n
Phommarath visited the country in 2023 while volunteering for a local non-profit geared toward building schools in Laos. While there, the filmmaker was able to document the inauguration of one of those schools and to explore her roots in a way she\u2019d long dreamed of doing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was really nervous,\u201d she recalls. \u201cA cousin who I never met before met us at the airport at 11 p.m., and walking around at night it felt a bit sketchy (in Vientiane), but in the daytime, it was a totally different world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Upon her return to Winnipeg, Phommarath interviewed her grandmother, her father and other relatives about their immigration stories.<\/p>\n
For the filmmaker, it was a continuation of a personal documentary style that she honed with her short Rising From Refuge. That film explored her family\u2019s dramatic journey across the Mekong River to a refugee camp in Thailand, to St. Pierre Jolys, to Hamilton, Ont., to Steinbach and to Winnipeg.<\/p>\n
Phommarath\u2019s filmmaking career began in her backyard in Transcona, where she would film detective stories with her friends when she was as young as six. While studying at Coll\u00e8ge Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Phommarath was inspired to pursue filmmaking as a career.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was half photography, half film, and I did poorly in photography but much better in filmmaking. I was shocked that I could do that, so I started doing more,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
At 19, Phommarath pitched her first documentary to CBC, which was released in 2020 when Phommarath was 21, kicking off a fruitful collaborative relationship with the national broadcaster. Including Dear Nya, she has now produced seven projects for the CBC Creators Network.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Supplied<\/p>\n Sidney Phommarath\u2019s latest film, Dear Nya, documented her visit to her ancestral homeland of Laos. <\/p>\n \n\t\tWinnipeg Free Press | Newsletter\n\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t Recent credits for Phommarath include working in the art department on Vancouver director Robin Dalla-Vicenza\u2019s film Rare Birds, as a gaffer for Winnipeg filmmaker Angeline Javier\u2019s short All the Words, and as the director of Two Widows, a short film created for the film group\u2019s One Take Super 8 event and screened at last year\u2019s FascinAsian.<\/p>\n Starring Stephanie Sy, Joshua Banman and Junko Bailey (The Grudge), Two Widows is a period noir about a widow approached by a mysterious woman in black who transports the woman through a looking glass and into the afterlife. Shot at the St. Boniface Cathedral, outside in St. Norbert and at the film group\u2019s Black Lodge Studio, the stylish short displays Phommarath\u2019s capacity for powerful fictional narrative to go along with her documentary skill set.<\/p>\n Upcoming credits for Phommarath include work in the camera department for local award-winning filmmaker Ande Brown\u2019s short film Half-Naked.<\/p>\n The Erin Hembrador award recognizes an emerging filmmaker who has only made short films in their career and includes a custom plaque, a $500 cash prize, and more than $3,000 in in-kind gear rentals from the film group and Frank Digital.<\/p>\n winnipegfreepress.com\/benwaldman<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t Ben Waldman Ben Waldman is a National Newspaper Award-nominated reporter on the Arts & Life desk at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg, Ben completed three internships with the Free Press while earning his degree at Ryerson University\u2019s (now Toronto Metropolitan University\u2019s) School of Journalism before joining the newsroom full-time in 2019. Read more about Ben<\/a>.<\/p>\n Every piece of reporting Ben produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print \u2014 part of the Free Press\u2018s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press\u2019s history and mandate<\/a>, and learn how our newsroom operates<\/a>.<\/p>\n
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