Telefilm Canada has appointed Julie Roy as its new executive director and CEO for a five-year term.
The Canadian government agency is the country’s largest film financier, and Roy comes to Telefilm from the National Film Board of Canada, where she was most recently director general and chief programming officer.
“I am honored to be appointed as director of Telefilm Canada. The country’s digital landscape is in a state of flux and the challenges ahead are significant and exciting. Opportunities are ahead of us. We need to capture them to increase the impact of our talent and our business,” Roy said in a statement Monday ahead of taking the top post on April 3, based in Montreal.
Roy replaces Christa Dickenson, who left Telefilm in September 2022 after four years in the role. During her tenure, Dickenson invested in the reopening and recovery of Canada’s film production sector amid the pandemic and overcame criticism and opposition to increased funding for a greater diversity of Canadian creative voices, which bringing in new talent from the country’s Black, Indigenous and People of Color communities. .
While at the NFB, Roy was also an executive producer of its French animation studio, where she produced around 50 films, mostly animated shorts where the publicly funded filmmaking multiple Oscars. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
“Ms. Roy is a certified bilingual director who knows the challenges facing the audiovisual industry today. A strong advocate for equity, diversity and inclusion on both sides of the camera, she will continue the work already started by Telefilm and its partners to achieve an inclusive and representative industry,” said Robert Spickler, chairman of Telefilm’s board of directors, in a statement on Monday.
