Laura Rietveld - ON “The Making of Okpik’s Dream”

RIETVELD, Laura – Laura Rietveld is a writer, director, filmmaker and laureate of the Counsel of Arts and Letters of Quebec 2015 Prize for Work of an Emerging Montreal Artist. Her first documentary, Okpik’s Dream about the life of Inuit dog musher, Harry Okpik, was nominated for Best Documentary Program at the 2016 Canadian Screen Awards, won Grand Prix, Rigoberta Menchú Award at the 2015 Montreal First Peoples Festival, Honourable Mention for the Grand Prize at the 2015 Innsbruck Nature Film Festival in Austria, and continues to screen nationally and internationally. Driven by a deep desire to explore thoughtprovoking, socially relevant stories, Laura resigned from a successful corporate career in media sales and publishing to become a filmmaker. She holds an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business, a BA in History from Queens University and frequently speaks about her experiences leaving the corporate world to pursue a creative one.