Anita Doron facts for kids

Anita Doron (born June 3, 1974) is a Hungarian-Canadian film director, screenwriter, and author. She is known for making movies that tell unique stories. One of her most famous films is the 2012 movie The Lesser Blessed. She is also a TED Fellow, which is an honor given to people with great ideas.

Early Life and First Film

Anita Doron was born in a region that was once part of the Soviet Union, called Transcarpathia. Her family loved mountain climbing. They often spent summers in the mountains of Georgia and Armenia.

Doron has said that her parents taught her to think for herself and look for different truths. This inspired her to see the world in her own way from a young age.

From Poetry to Pictures

Before she made movies, Doron loved to write poetry. She wrote her first poem when she was only five years old after a trip to the Black Sea. Her mother was very impressed, which encouraged her to keep writing.

She joined a group for young poets and had her poems published. She became one of the youngest published poets in the former USSR. But soon, she found a new way to tell stories: filmmaking. She once said, "I don't write poetry anymore but, to me, filmmaking is poetry."

A Bold First Movie

Doron made her first film when she was 12. She used a friend's Super 8 camera. The film was about the "Verke" river in her hometown. The river was very polluted, and people couldn't swim in it anymore.

Doron and her friend tried to film how the river was being polluted. They also wanted to interview local people about it. Their project made some city leaders nervous. Doron was told to stop filming, but her parents supported her and told her to finish it. This experience showed her how powerful movies could be.

After this, Doron moved from the USSR to the Middle East and then to Toronto, Canada. She attended Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University) to study film.

Education and Career Beginnings

At Ryerson University, Doron studied everything about making movies, including writing, directing, and using cameras. She even got to work on the set of the 2002 movie Ararat as a research assistant.

While in school, she won awards for her student films. Her final school project, a short film called Simulacrum, won Best Student Film at an international festival in 2002.

After graduating, Doron made her first professional short film, Not a Fish Story (2002). It was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival and won several awards. In 2004, she directed another short film called Elliot Smelliot.

A Career in Filmmaking

Anita Doron has directed many different kinds of films, from feature-length movies to music videos and documentaries.

Feature Films

In 2006, Doron released her first full-length movie, The End of Silence. She wrote, directed, and filmed it herself with a small team and a small budget. This style of filmmaking is sometimes called "guerilla style." The movie won several awards, including Best Feature at the Canadian Filmmakers Festival.

Her next feature film was Europa, East (2010). She also made this film using a small crew and budget, which allowed her to experiment with new ideas.

One of her most well-known films is The Lesser Blessed (2012). It is based on a novel by Canadian author Richard Van Camp. The story is about a teenage boy who feels like an outsider in his community. To prepare, Doron traveled to the Northwest Territories and spent a month in the author's hometown, Fort Smith, to write the script.

Finding someone to play the main character, Larry Sole, was a challenge. On the last day of casting, she saw a boy in a school hallway who was perfect for the part. That boy, Joel Evans, had not even come to the audition because he had a math test.

Interactive and Documentary Films

In 2007, Doron worked on a special project called Late Fragment. It is known as North America's first interactive feature film. This means the audience can make choices that change the story. Doron directed one of the three parts of the film.

In 2009, she also directed three short documentaries for a project called City Sonic. These short films featured musicians in different locations around Toronto.

Music Videos

Between 2005 and 2009, Doron directed music videos for several Canadian musicians. These included Sarah Harmer, Theresa Sokyrka, and Octoberman. For the Octoberman video, she created illustrations based on a fairy tale she wrote as a child.

Writing and Recent Work

Besides filmmaking, Doron also writes. In 2012, she released a graphic novella (a short graphic novel) called Lola Grimm and the Humanity Machine.

In 2017, she was the screenwriter for the Oscar-nominated animated movie The Breadwinner. The film tells the story of a young girl in Afghanistan who must disguise herself as a boy to support her family.

Filmography

Film

Short films

Music videography

Awards and nominations

In 2005, Doron won the Kodak New Vision Fellowship. This program allowed her to be mentored by famous Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta.

In 2012, Doron was honored along with six other Canadian women filmmakers for their important work in movies. The next year, she was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Lesser Blessed.