Tamara Scherbak

Tamara Scherbak is a Canadian writer and director of Ukrainian and Austrian descent. She is an alumna of multiple festival talent labs, such as the Toronto International Film Festival and the (...) Berlinale, as well as the Netflix-Banff Diversity of Voices Initiative. Scherbak has written and directed a body of work across the genres of fiction, documentary and experimental cinema that have travelled to film festivals around the globe. Notable works include “Dedashka” (2009), winner of Best Director at the Montreal Festiv’elles Film Festival for women filmmakers, “Only Sky & Water” (2011), which screened in competition at the Hot Docs Film Festival and “Is Your Teen a Homosexual?” (2018), 1 of 9 scripts selected for development at the 2015 Berlinale Talents Short Form Station. That short fiction film has screened at over 30 film festivals such as NewFest, Rendez-vous Québec Cinema and the Kyiv International Short Film Festival. Tamara has also directed work for the National Film Board of Canada, and Vice Quebec including the 4-part series “For The Better” garnering millions of views across online platforms. Her most recent work “White Noise” (2023) was funded by SODEC, the Harold Greenberg Fund Shorts-to-Features program and the CFC and will also be streaming on Crave in 2024. The film had its world premiere at the 2023 Fantasia International Film Festival where it won two awards, The Gold Audience Award for Best Canadian Short Film and the juried Silver Mels Best Film Award. The short also won Best Sound Design at the Blood In the Snow Film Festival and played in competition at the Whistler Film Festival. The feature version of White Noise is currently in development with Telefilm Canada and an anthology television series based on the White Noise universe is currently in development with the CMF. Tamara is also in development on the feature film adaptation of the novel “Cazzarola!” by Polish-Ukrainian-Canadian author Norman Nawrocki and in post-production on the documentary project “OST: Displaced Memories”, a personal journey documenting her family’s experiences as forced labourers and refugees during World War Two, funded by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Shevchenko Foundation.