Charles Officer

Bio

Charles Officer is the founder and creative director of Canesugar Filmworks. A former professional hockey player, Charles Officer studied design at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto and was a creative director for a major advertisement agency in the city before being accepted into the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City, where he studied performance.

His directorial debut When Morning Comes, a short film, premiered at the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival. His next short film entitled Short Hymn Silent War, told the story of four black women coping with an epidemic of gun violence in their community. The film screened at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival.

He wrote and directed his first feature film Nurse.Fighter.Boy, in 2008, starring Clark Johnson (Homicide, The Wire). Premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival, his cinematic urban love story captured audiences’ hearts and resulted in a record breaking 10 Genie Nominations (Canada’s Oscar) in 2009. The film premiered at MoMA and won the Audience Choice Awards at the Mannheim-Heidelberg Film Festival and the Sarasota Film Festival.

Charles followed up with his first feature documentary film, Mighty Jerome, (2010) for the National Film Board of Canada. His breathtaking cinematic, black and white film followed the rise and fall of Harry Jerome, Canada’s greatest unsung track and field start. The film won multiple awards including a 2012 Emmy Award for best Historical Documentary. More importantly, the film cemented Charles’ career as a filmmaker of exemplary talent and dedication to telling stories that so often go unnoticed.

In 2017 Charles premiered his second feature length documentary film, Unarmed Verses, the story of a remarkably astute and luminous 12-year-old black girl living in Toronto community housing, whose neighborhood faces imposed relocation. The film won Best Canadian Feature at the Hot Docs International Film Festival and at the Vancouver International Film Festival. It was also selected to be part of the exclusive Toronto International Film Festival Top Ten series where it won the Audience Choice Award.

Almost simultaneously Charles directed a documentary for CBC Television, The Skin We’re In, featuring Toronto journalist and activist Desmond Cole, exploring anti-black racism in Canada.

Charles then embarked on writing and directing the authorized feature documentary film about Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s transcendent novella Le Petit Prince. The film was distributed by The Orchard and was distributed internationally through Netflix in the US, UK, Ireland, France, Australia and New Zealand, with additional releases in Thailand, Singapore, Morocco, Italy, and China.

Akilla’s Escape marks Charles’ return to the feature fiction format. The film’s first draft was written soon after Nurse.Fighter.Boy’s release, finally coming to fruition through Charles’ perseverance and the incredible collaboration with acclaimed slam-poet and actor Saul Williams (Slam, Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize, 1998).

In addition Charles has directed multiple episodes of television including Rookie Blue (ABC), Saving Hope (NBC), Private Eyes (Ion), Ransom (CBS), 21 Thunder (Netflix), Ransom and Coroner. He has also directed music videos for artists such as K’naan and DJ Green Velvet. He serves on the boards of Reel Canada, which introduces Canadian cinema to recently landed immigrants, and The Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada’s leading art museum.