February 10, 2025

By Marriska Fernandes

Last week, while honouring the Top Ten Canadian feature films and shorts in 2024, the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) also awarded the inaugural Charles Officer Legacy Award, co-presented by TIFF and CBC. The award honours the memory of Officer, whose death on December 1, 2023 inspired an outpouring of grief from members of the Canadian film scene. (Officer was posthumously recognized with the Company 3 Luminary Award by the TFCA.)

This award recognizes a Black Canadian director or writer whose body of work exemplifies Officer’s creative excellence, strong point of view, and community-mindedness. Montreal-based filmmaker Miryam Charles was announced as the inaugural recipient of the $25,000 Charles Officer Legacy Award. Her first feature film, This House (Cette maison), was a Canada Top Ten selection in 2022 and premiered at the Berlinale.

I spoke with jury members Anita Lee, Chief Programming Officer at TIFF, and Lea Marin, Director of Development, Drama at CBC. I also spoke with Miryam about being the inaugural recipient. They all echoed the same sentiment: Officer loved cinema. He knew the story he was after and how to connect with his subjects. But more importantly, his interest in building community and in particular creating space for Black and racialized creators.

On the legacy of Charles Officer

Marin: There’s something about the way that he looked at the world that pulled me in right away. When I first met him, we were trying to figure out what we might develop and work on together and it became Unarmed Verses (2017). But at the time, I asked him the question: “What is it that you want to understand? What is it that you want to explore?” And he said to me, “I want to know what’s breaking their hearts.” It just hit me because he understood exactly the story he was after but he also understood it from a very human place, really wanting to connect with his subjects. I think there is that curiosity about him in terms of the way that he saw things and the choices he made about the stories that he wanted to tell. Whenever you met him, he leaned in and I think it was infectious. That has enacted so many other storytellers in terms of not just his influence on them, but the way that they start to think about the work that they want to do and the way that we want to look at the world and the world that we want to live in.

Lee: I knew Charles really well…I’ve had so many wonderful creative discussions, and life discussions with Charles, but I think my biggest memory of Charles is that he came to work in the studio every day while we were making films [during Lee’s tenure at the NFB] and he had the biggest smile. He spoke and talked with everybody and would be this breath of sunshine. He was always just uplifting everybody around him.

How the award honours Charles Officer’s legacy

Marin: There are a few pillars. I think on one level: creatively. Charles told many stories, but he believed in really demonstrating Black excellence and Black identity. So that was something we were looking at. I think also his interest in pushing form and storytelling. Even more importantly, the building of community and in particular [with] Black racialized creators and creating platforms and space for them and recognizing that that only comes from you creating that space. Those things are examples of elements of what his work emulated, and the way he worked.

Lee: For me, the two things that really stood out about Charles’ signature. One was his curiosity, openness, and his willingness to take risks and experiment in his art. But then key to his artistic experimentation was his strong commitment to community building and mentorship. I think, for us, we’re really looking for someone who brings those two qualities together in a way that Charles did.

On how Miryam’s work aligns creatively with Officer’s

Marin: Charles loved cinema and he realized that it was a way of communicating that feeling, that it isn’t just that this is the story—these are the mechanics of the story. It was evocative and provocative. Looking at her work and looking at the way that she uses sound, the way she plays with imagery, the fact that she is tapping into things and trying to get the audience to have more of a visceral response, that was Charles. Even if it wasn’t necessarily something he did in this work, he had such an appreciation for artists and filmmakers who would use all of those elements of aspects of cinema to create that experience. It was such a fierce competition and what was wonderful was just realizing that there were so many Black filmmakers who are coming up in this industry that were worthy of this award.

Lee: It was quite unanimous and I have to say we had stellar applicants and we had incredible candidates. But I think Miryam also represented to us that risk-taking and audacity in her creative work in the way that we felt, if Charles saw her work, he would say, “Oh, I want to meet her.” We can imagine the two of them being really creatively aligned. The second part that we really saw was, I think, the work that Miryam has done in the racialized communities in Montreal, really committing to mentoring and taking part in the community development there. So I think that really spoke to us.

Miryam on receiving the award

It’s an incredible honour because when I was growing up as a filmmaker, I was looking up to other Black filmmakers in Canada and watching their work. And I really loved Charles’ work and all he did in cinema but also the TV show he directed.

Miryam on how Charles Officer inspired her

I think he inspired me to become more courageous with the way that I tell stories. I understand now that there are so many ways to tell stories other than mainstream cinema. I think Charles’ work really inspired me to say to myself, as a young filmmaker who started 10 years ago, to say that there’s other ways to tell stories, and those stories can also be very powerful.

On what shaped Miryam’s voice as a filmmaker

I try my best to honour Haitian culture. If you know a lot of Haitian people they have a way of telling stories in a very particular way. I try to do that as a filmmaker.