Andrea Dorfman

Andrea Dorfman (born October 29, 1968) is a Canadian screenwriter and film director based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She directed the Emmy Award films Flawed and Big Mouth (2012). Dorfman is one of the four co-creators of Blowhard. She fell in love with filmmaking at 12 years old, when her father gave her a camera. She graduated from McGill University and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. That same year, she made a docudrama about a nine-year-old girl suffering from separation anxiety, called Nine (1998). The film is a comedy about a young woman seeking an abortion after accidentally conceiving a child with her boyfriend. The main character, Kate, has been dating Ollie since high school but finds herself unhappy with the relationship.

In 2005, she directed the documentary Sluts (2005), which focused on women discussing the feeling of being labeled as so. She also made an animated film for the NYC Bicycle Film Festival called Thoughts on My Bike (2009). The film was named to the Toronto International Film Festival's year-end Canada's Top Ten list for 2020.

Dorfman continued to experiment with animation with Flawed, a 2010 short animated documentary combining stop-motion animation and hand-painted images. Flawed was produced in Halifax by Annette Clarke for the National Film Board of Canada. Dorfman proceeded to make more short films and animations filmed with colourful and often 2D watercolour images.

In 2010 she began making films for the human rights organization, The Equality Effect. It also screened at the Atlantic Film Festival.

Dorfman is currently working on a film called The Playground with Jennifer Deyell.

She has made tremendous contributions in the Canada film industry, particularly around animation.

Work Dorfman used to finance her films by working as a camera assistant or a cinematographer on other people's films and music videos.

She is known for her ability to turn the taboo into something different. She pulls the viewers mind from disturbing thoughts with an offbeat sense of humour. This is especially apparent in her films Parsley Days and Love that Boy. She is also recognized for her experimentation with animation.

Filmography