Camille Hollett-French

Camille Hollett-French is an award-winning multi-hyphenate filmmaker and actor. Her first film won the world's largest cash prize for a short film, the £20,000 Craghoppers Film Prize. It was part of the short film series Her Story (In Three Parts) which she wrote, directed, produced and starred in. It was shot across Canada, in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, in less than a year. Camille was born in Montreal to a father from Newfoundland and a mother from Trinidad. She moved to Toronto as a teenager and now resides in Vancouver. She's appeared in shows 'The Twilight Zone,' 'Motherland: Fort Salem,' 'Nancy Drew' and 'Valley of the Boom' playing the real-life person Tara Hernandez, a manager at Silicon Valley's 90s tech company Netscape, the famed startup responsible for Mozilla Firefox. Camille was the One-Minute Round winner of the Monologue Slam LA's first competition, for which she is now a sponsor providing a travel bursary to a participant to make it to LA to compete. In 2017, Camille made 'Her Story (In Three Parts).' It was a finalist for the Cayle Chernin Awards, named after the late Cayle Chernin and designed for female artists in the new media and theatre communities transitioning to other roles in the industry. She then made her first film, the second instalment of the series, 'No. 2: Hush Little Baby,' through the YEAA Shorts program at ACTRA Toronto, which was sponsored by Reel World Film Festival and William F. Whites. 'No. 2: Hush Little Baby' won Best Debut at the Discover Film Awards in London, where it went on to win the Craghopper's Film Prize of £20,000, the world's largest cash prize for an international short film. The same festival later awarded 'No. 3: In the Absence of Angels' with Best Director and Best International Drama. The script for 'No. 2: Hush Little Baby' was the first short film script to win LiveRead/LA. Her films have also screened at festivals including but not limited to Slamdance (as the only Canadian production in their inaugural Episodes program - Camille is a now a programmer for the festival's Narrative Features), The Awareness Film Fest (Special Jury Innovation Award), Oslo Independent Film Festival (Best Writer), Canadian Film Festival (Special Jury Award), Women's Film Festival (Best First Time Filmmaker) and the Female Eye Film Festival, where the entire series was screened as part of their inaugural International Women's Day event at the TIFF Lightbox Theatre in Toronto. In 2020, 'Her Story (In Three Parts)' was a finalist for the Lindalee Tracey Awards, an award presented through Hot Docs for emerging Canadian filmmakers making films in the spirit of the late Lindalee Tracey. Camille is a recent cohort of the Women In the Director's Chair Story & Leadership program and the Whistler Film Festival's Producers Lab. She is the recipient of the NFB's Filmmaker Assistance Program finishing fund of $5000 for 'FREYA,' a 'cautionary comedy' funded by the Harold Greenberg Fund $20,000 short film program. Camille was also a finalist for the MPPIA Short Film Award at the Whistler Film Festival. Her film ENDOMIC was made for the Symbiosis Filmmaking Competition through Imagine Science (NYC), whereby six filmmakers are chosen worldwide to partner with a scientist to make a film in eight days from concept to completion. Camille and research scientist Ipek Ensari's film is "just another run-of-the-mill biting feminist satire" about endometriosis, an enigmatic "women's" disease that affects 200 million people worldwide. It premiered at Slamdance 2021 for the first Unstoppable program for filmmakers with visible and non-visible disabilities. Before leaving Toronto, Camille facilitated a group called 'The Dead Actor's Society' whereby she invited professionals in the industry (coaches, directors, actors) to guest teach acting classes. After getting kicked out of theatre school, Camille received a diploma in journalism because she missed learning. Writing was her first foray into the arts as a child and film was her first love. As such, she'll always pursue the making of movies by whatever means she can. She and her chef partner drove from Toronto to Vancouver in an old renovated shortbus then lived in it for two years with their cat so that they could fund their film series.