STORY films are 10-15 minute shorts from directors, producers and editors in the Norman Jewison Film Program at the Canadian Film Centre. The films are professionally produced in the fall, edited before the New Year, and submitted to the international festival circuit. Recent STORY films have premiered at TIFF, VIFF, CIFF, Fantasia and many more! This is a chance for actors to connect with Canada’s most exciting emerging talent, both on and off screen, and to collaborate with writer/directors on a piece that supports a feature film in development.

Vanessa Sandre is a Brazilian-Canadian filmmaker based in Toronto. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Film and a Master's degree in Literature focused on Women and Gender Studies. Vanessa has cultivated a diverse career as a screenwriter, director, producer, and performer for the last 15 years. As a Latina immigrant and artist, she finds inspiration in crafting narratives that amplify underrepresented voices through a decolonial and intersectional feminist lens.

Her fictional short film ‘The Pleasure is All Mine’ (O Prazer é Todo Meu, 2023) addresses the taboo subject of female sexuality in old age. Filmed in Brazil, it has been selected for over 50 film festivals and received 30 awards worldwide.

Vanessa is a participant in the 2025 Directors' Lab of the Norman Jewison Program at the Canadian Film Centre (CFC). She is also an alumna of the 2024 Creators of Colour Incubator (CCI) and the Career Advancement Module of the Women in the Director’s Chair (WIDC) program.

Theodora, a woman in her eighties, lives alone in a society where even healthcare is automated. Prescribed The Touch Program to treat her depression, she’s paired with Joy, a professional cuddlist whose warmth awakens a long-forgotten sense of intimacy. Their sessions bring Theodora back to life: her appetite returns, her plants thrive, and she begins to feel seen again. But when the first phase of the program ends, she’s forced into artificial substitutes — first videos of touch, then a device known as The Happy Chair. Shaped to “embrace” her and simulate companionship, the chair embodies technology’s hollow attempt to mechanize what is most essentially human. Tender and darkly absurd, The Happy Chair asks what we stand to lose when human connection itself is outsourced.