Annmarie Morais

Education

She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from York University in Film and Video in 1995.

Career

Hotel Babylon is the story of immigrants working in a hotel in Winnipeg, Canada. Kink was adapted from the Trey Anthony play about a beauty parlour in a Jamaican-Canadian neighbourhood. Morais was also a writer and story editor on the television series adapted from the play, which aired on Global Television in 2007.

While at York, Morais had produced a short documentary Steppin on step-dancing in Toronto"s Jane-Finch neighborhood.

In 2004, she received Telefilm financing to produce a feature film based on the same concept. Originally titled Step, the film was accepted into the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.

At Sundance, a bidding war resulted in a $3.4 million offer from Paramount and Music Television Films. The film received wide release in the United States and Canada in January 2007.

Splitting her time between Los Angeles and Toronto, Morais has created a television show for American Broadcasting Company Family about high-school cheerleaders, called The Flip Side.

She is also writing a thriller set in London, The Collectors to be directed by fellow Jamaican-Canadian Clement Virgo and adapting Jane Finlay-Young’s novel From Bruised Fellow

Achievements

• Morais was the first Canadian to win the prestigious Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. She was also the first person to win the Nicholl with a resubmitted script. Bleeding was a finalist in 1998, and she resubmitted it without changes in 1999. The prize, administered by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, garnered Morais $25,000.