Whistler Film Festival


The Whistler Film Festival is an annual film festival held in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada. Established in 2001, the festival is held the first weekend of December and includes juried competitive sections, the Borsos Awards, and the Pandora Audience Award. A conference for the Canadian film industry, known as the Whistler Summit, is organised in connection with the film festival.
As of 2015, the Whistler Film Festival bills itself as "Canada's coolest film festival" and has been increasingly attracting more distributors and sales agents. The 2015 festival presented the Canadian premiere of Carol and the world premiere of Rehearsal among other world premieres. About half the films screened are Canadian and Paul Gratton, who became the festival's director of programming in June 2012, would like the Whistler Film Festival to become a "mini-Sundance" for Canadian films.
The 15th edition of WFF hosted 89 films, 10 events, and 30 interactive industry sessions. The event attracted 450 filmmakers and industry guests, and had a total attendance of 13,233 attendees. The 2015 Whistler Film Festival awarded $158,500 in cash prizes and commissions.

Film Competitions and Awards

The Whistler Film Festival features eight juried competitions with the following awards handed out at the Awards Brunch on the last day of the festival or post-event:
The Borsos Awards are named after Canadian filmmaker Phillip Borsos. The Pandora Audience Award is a non-cash prize presented to the highest-rated film as voted by the audience.