David Winning

David Winning is a Canadian-American film and television director, screenwriter, producer, editor, and occasional actor. Although Winning has worked in numerous film and TV genres, his name is most commonly associated with science fiction, thrillers and drama.

Life and career Winning was born in Calgary, Alberta. He became a dual citizen of the US and Canada in 2003 and lives in Los Angeles. He was making films at age ten with a Super 8 camera. In 1979, he received a Canada Council grant to make the sixteen millimeter drama Sequence, and expanded the plotline into his first feature film Storm, filmed in the summer of 1983 in Bragg Creek, Alberta. It was shot with money that his father had set aside for film school and was screened at Cannes.

At 27, he directed episodes of Friday the 13th: The Series for Paramount and received three Gemini Award nominations. His second feature Killer Image followed in 1992; the mystery-thriller starred Michael Ironside and M. Emmet Walsh. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s he directed 47 movies and episodes of twenty-nine series, including Stargate: Atlantis, ABC's Dinotopia filmed in Budapest, Nickelodeon’s Are You Afraid of the Dark?, and four seasons on Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda. He directed Kim Cattrall, Sean Young, and Eric McCormack in the award-winning thriller Exception to the Rule. His biggest budget studio movie to date is the $29-million kids sci-fi action sequel Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie for 20th Century Fox. He directed seven episodes of the Cannell police series Street Justice with Carl Weathers. Winning said "Episodic TV gets no respect" in a March 2000 Toronto Star interview. He directed a 16-year-old Ryan Gosling in the Pilot and seven episodes of the Paramount UPN kid series Breaker High.

According to the February 2010 Avatar issue of Sci Fi magazine, he was slated to direct the movie Sinbad: The Fifth Voyage with Patrick Stewart. He directed episodes of Space Channel's comedy/horror series Todd and the Book of Pure Evil and Lost Girl In 2002 he accepted the first national team award from the Directors Guild of Canada Best TV series Drama for Twice in a Lifetime and was nominated again in 2006. His episode of Stargate: Atlantis, "Childhood’s End", won three awards for Directing; New York, Houston and Chicago in 2005. In April 2008, Winning won two Directing awards at the Houston Film Festival/WorldFest in Texas and a Special Jury Award for his work on the Lifetime Television vampire series Blood Ties.

Winning's Film Field Day won Best Ensemble Cast at the Marina del Rey Film Festival in 2024.

2008 Hawaii Career Award and festival screenings Winning was honored at the 2008 Big Island Film Festival in Hawaii. He received a Special Career award on May 17, 2008 with a reception in his honor in Waikōloa Village. Swamp Devil also won the Golden Honu for Best Foreign feature film. A double bill of his two monster movies was presented at the outdoor festival; Swamp Devil starring Bruce Dern and Black Swarm starring Robert Englund. The first in his trilogy was Something Beneath with Kevin Sorbo in 2007. Black Swarm also screened at the Boston Film Festival on Friday the 13th of June, 2008. Both films were produced in Montreal by Muse Entertainment for the SYFY Channel, New York City.

Filmography Film

Television films and series