Bryn Hughes
Bryn Hughes is an award-winning producer based in Toronto and a founder of Frequent Flyer Films. For the past twenty years, Bryn has worked as a producer and production manager bringing many critically acclaimed documentary series and features to the screen. Bryn’s experience is wide and varied, having worked with major broadcasters and platforms, funders and filmmakers across Canada and around the world. Bryn is a multi-faceted producer; she has keen creative instincts and a tried and tested ability to get projects off the ground and into the world. She is skilled at bringing together the right collaborators for a project, and ensuring the creative vision of a film is protected during the production process. Bryn never shies away from a challenge.
In 2023, Bryn was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award (CSA) for Frequent Flyer’s first feature documentary, The Perfect Story (2022). Previous work includes the CSA nominated projects The Way Out (2019), The Great Wild Indoors (2018), and Gorilla Doctors (2016). Bryn won her first CSA for her work on the acclaimed history series War Story: Afghanistan (2017).
Since 2015, Bryn has taught production management and producing for documentary at the Documentary Filmmaking Institute at Seneca College. She is passionate about mentoring the next generation of documentary filmmakers and as a board member of the Documentary Organization of Canada, Bryn is committed to ensuring the documentary space is protected and supported in Canada’s media landscape.
Michelle Shephard
Michelle Shephard is an award-winning journalist, filmmaker, author and podcast host and producer who has covered issues of terrorism and civil rights since the 9/11 attacks. During her two decades at the Toronto Star, she reported from more than 20 countries, including Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Pakistan and went behind the wire at the U.S. Naval Prison, Guantanamo Bay more than two dozen times. Shephard was the co-director and producer of the Emmy-nominated documentary Guantanamo's Child (CBC / Al Jazeera), which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2015 and won Canada Screen Awards for best direction and the Donald Brittain Award for Best Social or Political Program. Her other films include the CSA-nominated The Perfect Story (NFB / TVO: director, producer, writer), which won the DGC Canadian Documentary Feature Award at Calgary Film Festival in 2022, the CSA-nominated The Way Out (CBC: 2018, co-director, co-producer, writer), Uyghurs: Prisoners of the Absurd (NFB: 2015, producer), the short film The Interpreters (Bravo/Bell Media: 2014, producer) and the Peabody Award-winning Under Fire: Journalists in Combat (CBC: 2011, associate producer and consultant).
She is also a three-time recipient of the National Newspaper Award; and the Governor-General’s Michener Award for public service journalism, and the author of Guantanamo's Child: The Untold Story of Omar Khadr, and Decade of Fear: Reporting from Terrorism's Grey Zone. Michelle is currently co-writing a memoir for FBI agent Scott Payne, dubbed by Rolling Stone Magazine as the “Hilbilly Donnie Brasco,” who spent more than twenty years going undercover to infiltrate the Klan, motorcycle gangs and neo Nazi accelerationist groups.
Her podcast series that she hosted and produced include Sharmini, a six-part investigation of a cold case she first covered as a cub reporter for the Toronto Star; Brainwashed, which looked at the CIA’s covert Cold War program “MK Ultra,” and White Hot Hate; a podcast that dove deep into the far-right terrorist group, The Base. She was also a writer and producer of the podcasts Unascertained; Do You Know Mordechai and The No Good Terribly Kind Wonderful Lives and Tragic Deaths of Barry and Honey Sherman.
In 2018, Michelle joined award-winning producer Bryn Hughes in creating Frequent Flyer Films.
Michelle continues to write on foreign policy issues and terrorism for various publications and is an active volunteer and on the Board of Directors of Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) and the Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma.