There are announcements that make you smile, and then there are those that confirm you’re exactly where you need to be. Canadian writers Meredith Hambrock, Susin Nielsen, and Mark Waddell have just made the shortlist for the 2026 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. With a $25,000 purse, this isn’t just an award—it’s a national institution, honouring the legacy of humourist Stephen Leacock since 1947. Meredith is in the running for her razor-sharp novel, She’s A Lamb!. It follows Jessamyn St. Germain, an actor fueled by the absolute certainty that she is destined for superstardom.The novel is also a brilliant homage to The Sound of Music—the exact show Jessamyn is dying to star in at a Vancouver theatre. While the world might see her as delusional, the book tracks her relentless quest, brilliantly exposing the sheer depths she’ll sink to for her shot. It’s incisively funny, wildly smart, and the momentum doesn’t stop on the page. The book is already slated for a feature film adaptation by 4am Film Studios, with the screenplay adapted by none other than Meredith herself. Talk about total creative control. Meredith is a novelist and television writer. She’s no stranger to the literary spotlight—her story You…

We are proud to announce the latest additions to our roster—an elite group of creators, XR artisans, and world-builders redefining narratives and technology. INVR.SPACE | Germany’s Prolific Immersive Studio INVR.SPACE joins our roster to lead the charge in immersive experiences. We are happy to collaborate with INVR.Space giving us a sure footprint into the “Dôme” circuit and high-end XR distribution. Monte Albers de Leon | Prestige Series Harvard-educated attorney, with over two decades of high-stakes legal experience, Monte Albers de Leon has made a definitive transition to full-time narrative development. He is currently developing a high-profile collaboration with Shaun Redick and Yvette Yates Redick at Impossible Dream Entertainment, alongside a new series and feature projects with Woolf+Lapin. Nic Bourgeois | Electronics Incarnate At the intersection of experimentation and performance, Nic develops their own wearable digital instruments to liberate electronic music from its usual static nature. Their work—simultaneously raw and vulnerable—uses the body to explore queer and sensitive realities. Winner of the Gotfrit-Barlett Prize for Nœuds au ventre (2024), this Master’s candidate at the Université de Montréal has established themselves as a key figure in the digital arts, propelling an expressive physical presence into the heart of programmed logic, both in…

Le vidéoclip « Mdē kuKu » du rappeur Komēdza a remporté le prix du jury (meilleur clip) lors de la 11e édition du Festival Courts d’un soir. Crédits de l’œuvre : Réalisation : Komēdza & Éloïse Lavictoire Direction de la photographie : Mathis Martin

Sinclair Dubreuil & Stephan Dubreuil How much of a book can you truly squeeze into a two-hour runtime? That question defines modern cinema, but we’re likely asking the wrong thing. It’s a strange irony: while 87% of the global population is literate, recreational reading is in a freefall. In the U.S. alone, daily reading for pleasure plummeted by 40% between 2003 and 2023—a steady, 3% annual decay. So, Emily Brontë who? Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie kissing passionately? Yes, please. Hollywood has realized that books are an infinite source of material, but more importantly, they come with a “built-in audience”—a recurrent phrase in the industry today. Is it playing it safe or playing it smart? Whatever your answer, this isn’t exactly a new phenomenon. Think back to the recent frenzy of Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, or even further back to classics like Lawrence of Arabia and 2001: A Space Odyssey. These were targeted at people who’d read the books, sure, but they appealed to everyone else too. There is a specific art form in taking an imagined world and realizing it as a visual spectacle. Most people walking into the theater or streaming at home might not even…

Le Festival International du Film sur l’Art (FIFA) s’est clôturé hier à Montréal, et chez Woolf+Lapin, nous sommes encore sous le choc esthétique. Bien que nous n’ayons pas pu tout voir, voici nos coups de cœur de cette édition. 1. Caravaggio (David Bickerstaff & Phil Grabsky) Maîtriser le passé pour mieux inventer l’avenir. Plonger dans le clair-obscur de Caravage, c’est étudier l’intensité brute et la lumière. Pour Woolf+Lapin, il incarne l’artiste-entrepreneur : rebelle, talentueux et inoubliable. Véritable icône au « buzz massif » de son époque, il est le symbole de l’impact hors norme qui sera toujours propulsé à l’international. 2. Cocteau (Lisa Immordino Vreeland) Jean Cocteau n’était pas qu’un poète, un cinéaste ou un dessinateur : il était tout cela à la fois. Il incarne l’essence même de la pluridisciplinarité que nous défendons chez Woolf+Lapin. Nous ne représentons pas des cases, nous représentons des visions. Redécouvrir Cocteau au FIFA, c’est célébrer l’idée que l’image de marque d’un artiste est, en soi, une œuvre totale. 3. Wider than the Sky (Valerio Jalongo) C’est ici que Woolf+Lapin se sent le plus « à la maison ». Ce film est un croisement magistral entre philosophie, art et science. L’intelligence artificielle n’y est…

Paloma Dawkins is a Canadian/Mexican artist and award winning video game director. Dawkins’ games explore the intersections of mythology, technology, and ecology, using speculative storytelling to question the structures that govern our existence. Dawkins’ hand drawn animation evoke a spirit within them that brings inanimate things to life, players are encouraged to engage in deep ecological listening reminding us that everything has agency and offers us potential for kinship. In this way, her games are places where we can suspend our disbelief and imagine an inclusive and shared ecological future. Dawkins’ has animated and directed games with the National Film Board of Canada, Victoria & Albert Museum, Factory International and has won a Canadian Screen Academy award. She has received grants from Canada Council for the Arts, CALQ, Canada Media Fund and is currently pursuing an MFA in Critical Ecological Practices at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. “I situate myself as a second-generation immigrant, a white-passing person of color with a maternal lineage traced to Nahuatl-speaking peoples of the Valley of Mexico and a settler lineage from Britain. I move with the privilege of passing as white while remaining tethered to Indigenous and immigrant histories. My practice emerges…

CRITERION CLOSET 2026 Oscar Nominees 98th Academy Awards | March 15, 2026 | Confirmed Criterion Closet visits With the 98th Academy Awards just days away (March 15, 2026), the film world is obsessing over wardrobe and speeches. But at Woolf+Lapin, we’re looking at something more intimate: the “Criterion Closet Picks.” Of this year’s Academy Awards nominees and breakout stars, we have selected seven who have stepped into the legendary Criterion Closet—that cramped, holy-grail-filled room where the world’s best artists reveal the films that actually made them. If you want to know why Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein feels so haunting, or how Mary Bronstein crafted the most talked-about indie of the year, the answers could very well be on these shelves. Guillermo del Toro Best Director | Best Adapted Screenplay Frankenstein Criterion Picks: Charade (Stanley Donen), The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick), Crumb (Terry Zwigoff), The Magician (Ingmar Bergman), The 400 Blows (Truffaut), Paths of Glory (Kubrick). The visit that started it all. Del Toro was the very first guest in the entire Criterion Closet Picks series in 2010, filmed on an iPhone. He has since returned for a second visit. His picks are a masterclass in art horror and the…

According to the California Privacy Protection Agency, Delete Request + Opt-out Program (DROP) is the first of its kind. It allows consumers to request the deletion of their data from over 500 data brokers — all in one request. California is the first in the world to provide this platform. Dr. Chris Mattmann is the Chief Data and Artificial Intelligence Officer (CDAIO) at UCLA, a first of its kind in the UC system. Before UCLA, Mattmann was the Division Manager of the Artificial Intelligence, Analytics and Innovative Development Organization at NASA Jet Propulsion Lab. Mattmann’s work helped uncover the Panama Papers scandal which won the Pulitzer Prize in Journalism in 2017.

Début 2026, Woolf+Lapin a conclu un partenariat en production et en représentation avec Citizen Skull, basé à Los Angeles — non pas dans une logique d’expansion, mais dans un souci d’alignement réfléchi. Ce type de rapprochement ne nous est pas étranger. Au fil des années, Woolf+Lapin a su nouer des collaborations structurantes, notamment avec CinéGroupe (CG2 Media Network). Concrètement, ce partenariat nous rapproche davantage : des conversations de haut niveau, des opportunités bien réelles, et d’une lecture encore plus fine du marché américain tel qu’il se présente aujourd’hui. Dans ce contexte, Woolf+Lapin est en permanence à la rencontre de nouveaux talents — et plus encore actuellement. Nous recherchons activement des créateurs de contenu singuliers (auteurs, réalisateurs, technologues créatifs, etc.), que vous souhaitiez évoluer dans ce cadre élargi et transfrontalier ou emprunter d’autres trajectoires créatives à nos côtés. In early 2026, Woolf+Lapin entered into a production and representation partnership with LA-based Citizen Skull — not as an expansion move, but as a deliberate alignment. This isn’t unfamiliar territory for us. Woolf+Lapin has partnered meaningfully in the past — notably with CinéGroupe (CG2 Media Network). In practical terms, this new partnership brings greater proximity: to higher-level conversations, to real deal flow, and…

By Sinclair + Stephan Dubreuil Through their company Artists Equity,  Ben Affleck and Matt Damon produced and starred in the police thriller RIP. And they stopped in at the Joe Rogan Experience to promote their new production, jokingly mentioning the regular press junkets on the circuit, speculating that talking to Joe Rogan alone could potentially be more viable than the aggregate of all their other interviews.  Among many other things, Affleck and Damon talked about Hunter S. Thompson, Chris Nolan’s Odyssey, MMA Fighting and the very astutely produced Adolescence, vaunting its straight up no-formula streamer production. The two brought up their negotiation with Netflix, and the decision to go for a streaming release instead of a theatrical one. They knew subjecting some of the plotting to data could make their film that much more successful. Netflix, they noted, outlined five tiers of performance tied to financial incentives, with the highest defined by a 110% watch rate, meaning every subscriber watches a title, with some returning for repeat viewings. A rare occurrence. More tellingly, they were encouraged to have a set piece in the first five minutes as well as reiterating the plot several times. The data suggests viewers are often…

Pierre “Pyaré” Friquet is a French XR creator and director whose work spans fiction, documentary, video games, and immersive experiences. A graduate of the Film & Television Institute of India, he developed early on an approach that blends classical storytelling, technological innovation, and sensory experimentation. PYARé is best known for his award-winning immersive works. Spaced Out, his aquatic VR installation, was selected at the Sundance Festival and showcased in the cultural program of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. He was creative collaborator and editor on the VR documentary You Destroy, We Create, produced by Meta, was nominated for an Emmy Award and won a Peabody Award. His pieces Jet Lag, Vibrations and Patterns have been presented at Cannes, NewImages, MUTEK, and the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma. His work as a director and narrative designer also extends to video games (Captain Nemo, Kei’s Dream), AR, video mapping, immersive domes, and social VR. He has collaborated with major artists and institutions, including Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Michel Jarre, Marc Caro, Chanel, Christie’s, Orange, and the French Ministry of Culture. PYARé is the founder of NiGHT Immersion, a studio combining art and technology, behind MeRCURY, a waterproof VR mask designed for pool-based experiences. His work…

Director’s Statement: Collectively, we have all become tethered to our phones. They are extensions of us. In an era where information is the most valuable commodity on the planet, our phones know us better than we know ourselves. Social media apps hypnotize us with an endless scroll of beautiful people and posts targeted at us by an algorithm. All while collecting our data — recording our personalities, our memories, the way we look and sound. The very fiber of our being. We have given big data permission to own our faces… to own us. But what happens when the lines between reality and idealized “perfection” become blurred? “Selfie” Credits: John Poliquin Director

This month’s 2025 edition of Mutek is in full swing. We particularly enjoyed London-based Harry Yeff’s talk on his research regarding creative applications for A.I. and machine learning. He focuses on performance, vocal experiments, and digital installations. He seamlessly gets in there between the human voice and technology, challenging conventional boundaries and promoting human-machine collaboration. And mad respect for Kalmyk-American poet and language artist Sasha Styles whose award-winning work “bridges tradition and innovation through hybrid poetics, generative imagination, and collaborative intelligence. Her transmedia practice reframes poetry as both art and technology — a means of encoding experience across time — and blends word, image and algorithm to explore human voice in a digital age.” . And it is worth mentioning Phoebe Greenberg’s immersive project Blur, a mixed-reality theatre experience that explores this liminal state between life and death, fact and fiction. Greenberg teamed up with famed contemporary dance choreographer Edouard Lock. We only saw glimpses of it as it will premiere at La Biennale di Venezia next week. And last but not least: props to Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer who gave a brilliant talk on his body of work.