Established in 2018, the Telefilm Canada Emerging Critic Award was created to find and promote new voices in the field of film criticism.

The award carries a cash prize of $5,000, courtesy of Telefilm Canada.

The 2025 Telefilm Canada Emerging Critic Award winner is Nirris Nagendrarajah. He is a freelance writer from Toronto. His culture criticism has appeared in CBCArts, The Ex-Puritan, Literary Review of Canada, MUBI Notebook, The Film Stage, Fête Chinoise, Ludwigvan, and Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. In addition to Metatron Press, his creative work has been published In the Mood Magazine, Ricepaper, Notch, Polyester, and Little White Lies. His areas of interest include fiction, film, theatre, opera and himself and he is currently part of Neworld Theatre’s Page Turn program in association with Intermission.

Previous winners

2024: Alexander Mooney

2023: Winnie Wang

2022: Michelle Krasovitski

2021: Rachel Ho

2020: Mark Hanson and Rose Ho (tie)

2019: Victor Stiff

2018: Genevieve Citron