Big Cedar Films is a creative non-fiction film & television company.
Our projects include the TIFF 2024 People’s Choice Documentary Award runner-up, Your Tomorrow, Banff-nominated and Canadian Screen Award-winning series and format, Farm Crime (CBC Gem), CSA Donald Brittain Award-nominated social justice doc, Above the Law (CBC POV; feature version, No Visible Trauma), mystery doc, The Missing Tourist (CBC POV), and genre-bending anthology, Brand Canada (CBC Digital).
The Team
The company is founded by Toronto-based producer, Geoff Morrison, whose work has been featured at festivals and film venues around the world including the Berlinale, TIFF, SXSW, Hot Docs, and the MoMA in New York.
Geoff oversees and produces all of Big Cedar Films’ projects, and occasionally writes and directs as well. He is also the creator of the Farm Crime and Brand Canada series.
Prior to establishing Big Cedar Films, Geoff was a principal with FilmCAN, where he produced and co-created the multiplatform documentary project, The National Parks Project. He won a Genie Award for producing Zacharias Kunuk’s short doc, Sirmlik, and a Gemini Award for producing and co-creating the Gord Downie-narrated, National Parks Project doc series for Discovery Channel. He also produced and helped oversee production on the project’s 13 short films and award-winning interactive piece.
Geoff’s other documentary projects include the TIFF-premiering, Beyond the Horizon, and the Peter Mettler-lensed, Gros Morne, which premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and toured Canadian festivals (Hot Docs, FNC Montreal, Calgary) with a live score.
Geoff has been very active in the Canadian documentary and new media industry for more than 15 years, sitting on the digital media jury for the Canadian Screen Awards, teaching documentary workshops at the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto, and as a mentor for the Documentary Organization of Canada’s “Breakthrough” program. Geoff is an alumnus of the RIDM and Berlinale Talent Campuses, and Queen’s University Film Studies Program.
Michal Heuston joined the company in 2018 as a production coordinator, researcher, and editor, shortly after graduating from the RTA School of Media at Toronto Metropolitan University.
In addition to their work at Big Cedar Films, Michal predominantly focuses on projects that centre the experiences of marginalized communities and the issues that affect them, in both scripted and unscripted realms. Some recent work includes; BODY SO FLUORESCENT (2020), a short film adapted from the award-winning theatre production that premiered at the Inside Out Festival in 2020, which they edited and created the graphics for; and Nancy’s Workshop (CBC Short Docs, 2019), on which they served as co-editor and post-production supervisor. For their work on Nancy’s Workshop, Michal was nominated for the Best Editing Award at the NFMLA Best of Awards in 2021.
Their upcoming debut documentary for OUTtv, The Queer Devotional, celebrates how three Queer folks from varying faith backgrounds have reconciled both their Queer and Religious identities. Created in collaboration with Ari Conrad Birch, the film will be released in 2023.
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Big Cedar Films has a wide network of collaborators, and is a proud signee of the Producer Pledge. As a company, we’re committed to dismantling systemic racism in film and television, and increasing representation of creators of all genders, sexual identities, and disabilities, beginning with hiring crew members from underrepresented groups, and when possible, creating mentorship opportunities.