Janelle Wookey
Co-founder and Producer
Wookey Films
Following the success of their first indie-documentary, Mémére Métisse which opened Toronto's 2008 ImagineNATIVE Film Festival and was broadcast on CBC, Radio-Canada and APTN, she and her brother Jeremie started their careers at Radio-Canada in Winnipeg working in news and special series. In 2013, they started Wookey Films.
In 2014, their film Treading Water won Best Short Documentary at the ImagineNATIVE Film Festival in Toronto. In 2016, Janelle was nominated for three Prix Gémeaux awards, including for Best Arts & Culture Documentary or Series for Wookey Films' Les boys du ballet. As an active member of the franco-métis community, Janelle has participated in several cultural events and panels. In 2017, she was selected alongside Alanis Obomsawin and Colm Feore to sit on the 9 person committee tasked with selecting candidates for the new board and CEO of CBC / Radio-Canada. As an on-air personality, she covered the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics for APTN and co-hosted its nationally-broadcast Indigenous Day Live celebrations in 2017, 2018 and 2020.
In 2022, she won a Rockie Award at the Banff World Media Festival for ‘A Nation and Her Mother’, a short historical piece she wrote and starred in about the history of Métis people. In 2023 she won Realscreen’s Propelle Pitch Competition in Los Angeles following pitches to Netflix, PBS, A&E and Peacock.
