سيرة
Frances-Anne Solomon, a pioneer in the film and television industry, was born in England to Trinidadian parents. She was raised and educated in the Caribbean and Canada before relocating to Great Britain, where she established a successful career in the 1990s as a TV Drama Producer and Executive Producer at the BBC. Her work included executive producing Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998) by John Maybury and Speak Like a Child (1998) by John Akomfrah. Through her production company, Leda Serene Films, she also produced and directed films and television programs.
In 2000, Solomon moved to Toronto, where she continued to write, direct, produce, and create her own projects. Her film A Winter Tale (2007) earned numerous prestigious international awards, including Best Diaspora Film in The Paul Robeson Category at FESPACO 2009. Her directing credits include the feature films Peggy Su! (1997), What My Mother Told Me (1995), Bideshi (1995), and documentaries such as Literature Alive (2005) and I Is a Long Memoried Woman (1990). She produced the multi-award-winning feature Kingston Paradise (2013) and was co-creator, producer, and director of Lord Have Mercy! (2003), Canada’s popular Caribbean sitcom starring comedian and actor Russell Peters, which aired on Vision TV, Toronto1, Showcase, and APTN and received two Gemini nominations.
Her most recent feature film, Hero: The Extraordinary Life of Mr. Ulric Cross (2019), began its world tour on February 28, 2019, and has garnered critical acclaim. HERO opened the CaribbeanTales International Film Festival, the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival, the New York African Film Festival's Opening Night at Film at Lincoln Center, the DC Caribbean Film Festival, and premiered at the Durban International Film Festival. It is currently airing on Showtime in the US.
Solomon is the founder and CEO of CaribbeanTales Media Group, which produces, exhibits, and distributes Caribbean-themed content. This includes the CaribbeanTales International Film Festival, CaribbeanTales Worldwide Distribution, CaribbeanTales-TV, CineFAM—which promotes bold original films by women of color creators—and the Windrush Caribbean Film Festival based in the UK. She is a Director member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Directors Guild of Canada.
