Shelagh Carter

3D film, move to Bangladesh, and Rana Plaza Carter directed another experimental short film, Is It My Turn (2012), a 3D black and white dance film, for an expected five-year term. This led to Carter producing a short documentary, Rana Plaza: Let Not the Hope Die (2014), commemorating the one-year anniversary of the tragedy, "to support his work". Is It My Turn was screened in Dhaka at the request of the Canadian High Commission in January 2015, with Carter in attendance. In August 2015, she was described as living there "part-time".

Return to feature films Carter's second feature (and fourth collaboration with Schnitzer), Before Anything You Say (2017) is an experimental domestic drama film about a couple struggling to maintain their love and marriage even as a life-altering decision threatens to tear them apart. The film is once more partly autobiographical, based on her feelings about her husband accepting the position which took him to Bangladesh: "he was gone and here I was, in the prairies, by myself, in the place he wanted to move to." The film toured mainly in Europe in 2017 and 2018, almost overlapping with the release of her third feature, and won a handful of awards ahead of its Canadian premiere at the Gimli Film Festival in 2018, where Carter was presented with an award by the Directors Guild of Canada.

Carter's third feature, Into Invisible Light (2018), is loosely based on characters from Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, specifically Yelena and Dr. Astrov. The story is about a recent widow re-examining her life and her identity in the wake of her husband's death, unexpectedly crossing paths with an old flame from her past, inspired to take up writing years after having given it up. a psychological thriller called Skinner, written by Rebecca Gibson, about a detective who works with child victims of Internet exploitation who begins to suspect abuse in her own family; a humanistic comedy called Dreaming of Tempests; an allegory called La Jefa; most recently, The Woman Who Swallowed West Hawk Lake, a psychological thriller, is said to be in development.

Directing style and aesthetics Carter's experiences as an actress in New York and Los Angeles led her to want to become an actor herself and to develop her own method of directing:I discovered a lot of directors didn't know how to talk to actors. They were much more technically minded and they would talk to an actor … and I knew from my training as an actor that doesn't help an actor. It's a process ... You have to be able to help them get into character and not tell them "cry here." as "a great mentor".

Filmography Short film director, 2002–2010 The Darkling Plain (2002) Rifting/Blue (2005) Night Travellers (2007) One Night (2009) Resolve (2009) Canoe (2010)

Feature film director, 2011– Passionflower (2011) Is It My Turn (2012) • short dance film Rana Plaza: Let Not the Hope Die (2014) • short documentary Before Anything You Say (2017) Into Invisible Light (2018) Love, Repeat (2019)