Michelle Latimer

Michelle Latimer is a Canadian actress, director, writer, and filmmaker. She initially rose to prominence for her role as Trish Simkin on the television series Paradise Falls, shown nationally in Canada on Showcase Television (2001–2004). Since the early 2010s, she has directed several documentaries, including her feature film directorial debut, Alias, and the Viceland series, Rise, which focuses on the 2016 Dakota Access Pipeline protests; the latter won a Canadian Screen Award at the 6th annual ceremony in 2018.

Latimer's 2020 film Inconvenient Indian won the People's Choice Award for Documentaries and the award for Best Canadian Film at the Toronto International Film Festival. She is also the co-creator, writer, and director of the CBC Television series Trickster.

Early life Latimer was born and raised in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Latimer later studied theatre at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec.

Career Latimer initially garnered recognition for portraying goth teen Trish Simpkin in Paradise Falls.

After Paradise Falls, she returned to the stage, starring in Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love, written by Brad Fraser. She performed the play in 2004 at Crow's Theatre in Toronto and she played Benita, a psychic prostitute. Like Paradise Falls, the play also had some controversy for its open depiction of sexuality.

Since the early 2010s, Latimer has dedicated her time to documentary filmmaking. In 2013, she made her feature film directorial debut Alias, which "follows aspiring rappers trying to escape the gangster life." The film received positive reviews, was nominated for several awards, including for a Canadian Screen Award, and screened at the Hot Docs Film Festival. Also in 2013, she was chosen as one of Playback 's "10 To Watch".

Latimer's Viceland documentary series, titled Rise, which focuses on the 2016 Dakota Access Pipeline protests, premiered at the Special Events section of the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. The series won a Canadian Screen Award at the 6th annual ceremony in 2018. In advance of the television premiere, two episodes of the series was screened in the Primetime program at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival, and at the Cinéfest Sudbury International Film Festival in Sudbury.

Trickster premiered on CBC Television on October 7, 2020. She adapted the series from Eden Robinson's 2017 novel Son of a Trickster. The series centres on Jared, an Indigenous Haisla teenager and small-time drug dealer in Kitimat, British Columbia, who becomes increasingly aware of the magical events that seem to follow him. The series was renewed for a second season prior to the first season's premiere; the second season is expected to be based on Trickster Drift, the second novel in Robinson's trilogy. The CW acquired the U.S. broadcast rights for the series, which premiered in the country on January 12, 2021. In its December 2020 year in review, the Canadian film and television industry magazine Playback named Trickster the Scripted Series of the Year.

Latimer's documentary film, Inconvenient Indian, also premiered at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival. The film blends scenes in which King, filmed in a taxi cab being driven by actress Gail Maurice in character as an indigenous trickster, narrates portions of his own book, blended with video clips of historical representation of indigenous peoples as well as segments profiling modern figures, such as Kent Monkman, Christi Belcourt, A Tribe Called Red, Alethea Arnaquq-Baril and Nyla Innuksuk, who are reshaping the narrative with their contemporary work in art, music, literature and film.

At the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival, Inconvenient Indian won the People's Choice Award for Documentaries and the award for Best Canadian Film.

In October 2023, she directed two episodes of the Peacock streaming series Suburban Screams.

Other work Latimer also works as a film curator; she was a programmer for the ImagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival, the Hot Docs Film Festival and is a programming advisor for the Regent Park Film Festival. In a September 2020 interview about her film and TV projects, she stated that her mother had a complicated relationship with her mixed race identity.

In December 2020, her Indigenous identity came into question after a National Film Board (NFB) press release announcing the release of her film Inconvenient Indian stated a connection to the community of Kitigan Zibi in Quebec, which the community denied. Latimer subsequently apologized for having claimed historical roots to the Kitigan Zibi community before fully verifying them, after the husband and wife producing team of Tony Elliott and Danis Goulet resigned from the show, citing the questions and criticism about Latimer's ethnic identity as their reason. Latimer's documentary film Inconvenient Indian was also withdrawn from the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, all other film festivals, and from distribution, by the NFB until further notice.

Latimer produced genealogical records to bolster her claim that she was a 'non-status Algonquin'; these claims were rejected by tribal leaders. Census records reviewed by CBC News suggest that Latimer's grandfather was French-Canadian. However, Dominique Ritchot, a genealogist and researcher with an expertise in French-Canadian families, claimed that Latimer had two Indigenous ancestors dating from 1644, while most of her other ancestors were identifiable as French Canadian, Irish and Scottish. Later, Sébastien Malette, an associate professor in the Department of Law and Legal Studies at Carleton University, and Siomonn Pulla, an associate professor in the College of Interdisciplinary Studies at Royal Roads University produced a joint genealogical report which found that Latimer has Indigenous ancestry from both her paternal and maternal lines that originated from a "historical community of Baskatong that was known for its Algonquin and Métis population." claiming to "have grave concerns about the fairness and accuracy" of the CBC's reporting on her ancestry. Latimer elaborated that the CBC "created a false narrative about my character and my lineage."

In October of the same year, Latimer withdrew the CBC lawsuit without formal explanation.

Accolades