Biography
Peter D. Findlay is an award-winning director, writer and producer. A member of the Directors Guild of Canada, he holds degrees from York University and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. He is also a member of the boards of the DOC Institute, the Documentary Organization of Canada, and the Durham Region International Film Festival.
Since leaving his position as a staff producer at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in 2000 - where he worked for the Fifth Estate and the National Magazine - Findlay's work as a freelancer has been broadcast internationally on CTV, PBS, ZDF/Arte, the Discovery Channel, History TV, and back again at the CBC, among others. He has twice been nominated for Gemini Awards, winning for best sports documentary program in 2003, as well as winning 3 awards in three different categories at the Houston World Fest Film Festival and co-winning a Canadian Science Writers Award. His films have also been finalists for a Canadian Association of Journalists award, a HotDocs award for best social or political documentary, and at the New York Film and Television Festival.
in 2011, Findlay's work as writer and director on "Raw Opium: Pain, Pleasure, Profits" garnered his film's selection to the prestigious Economist Film Project and a screening on PBS' "Newshour". Shot on location in India, Tajikistan, China, Portugal, and Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, Raw Opium was broadcast on TVO, ARTE-ZDF, and SBS Australia, with a special screening at The Open Society Foundation in NYC in 2012. In 2015, Findlay produced his first self-written and directed short drama, "The Bear", which was screened at the Toronto International Short Film and Yellowknife International Film Festivals in 2015. It also took top honours for direction and cinematography at the Fort McMurray International Film Festival and was selected for the 2016 Austin and Edinburgh Short Film Festivals, as well as the 2016 Atlantic Film Festival.
More recently, Findlay was the director, writer and and executive producer on the feature documentary "Company Town" in partnership with Nomad Films. "Company Town" is the inside story of the fight by the autoworkers of Oshawa to keep General Motors from shuttering its plants at the cost of 5,000 lost union jobs and was broadcast on CBC-TV's "POV" documentary series in October, 2020. Company Town won best regional film at the Durham Region International Film Festival in October, 2020, as well as best Canadian film, best-in-festival, and the Miguel Cifuentes Radical Change Award at the 2020 Canadian Labour International Film Festival. In 2021, it was also nominated for four Canadian Screen Awards: best editing in a documentary, best original music (non-fiction), best director for a documentary series, and best documentary program. In 2021, the film was also an official selection at Northwestfest in Edmonton, the Ottawa Canadian Film Festival, the Freep Film Festival in Detroit, MI, and the Workers Unite Film Festival in New York City - where "Company Town" won best feature documentary. Most recently, it was screened at the 2022 Mayworks Festival of Working People and the Arts.
Since 2022, Findlay has been partnering with the Edmonton, AB-based Cree film production company Red Earth Blue Sky Productions on the development of a slate of Indigenous documentary programming, including both series and feature documentaries.
