Bio

Patricia Gruben has recently returned to filmmaking after a long career of teaching production, screenwriting and film studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, and running the Praxis Centre for Screenwriters (now the Screenwriters Lab at the Whistler Film Festival). Her work has been shown at festivals around the world, including TIFF, VIFF, New York Film Festival, and Sundance. She has also worked in theatre and installation, and published several articles and book chapters on independent North American and Indian cinema. She was honoured as Woman of the Year by Vancouver Women in Film and Television in 2016.  Her new hybrid feature film, Heart of Gold, will be released in December 2022. 

Works

Floating Islands

  • 2019
  • Patricia Gruben

On an island off the coast of Washington, a Pentecostal camp counsellor finds two fugitives from El Salvador trying to cross the border into Canada. Over the course of a long day, she must decide whether she can -- or will -- help them. Meanwhile, at her summer cottage, a woman and her son spy on them with a drone, and this conflict ends in calamity.

A person with long dark hair faces a landscape with forested hills meeting the sea.