- Director/Producer

Prior to building a career in film, Julia Szucs worked for eight years as an outdoor leadership educator and seven years in the field of environmental assessment. While her formal training includes a BSc. degree in Physical Geography, she has been experientially well-

served by a love of ocean adventure and a passion for leadership of multi-week kayak expeditions, primarily along the Pacific coastline. In 2004 Julia was selected for a core role on a grueling 500 km long sea kayak expedition in Canada’s High Arctic — that journey, which became the narrative centerpiece for the feature documentary Abandoned in the Arctic, launched her into professional film production.

With a knack for visual storytelling — proven initially in her editing and assembly of instructional modules for First Nations hunter-assisted research on caribou — Julia’s major film credits are in documentary directing and producing. After her completion of

Pick-up Sticks (which became an official selection of the 2009 Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour), Julia started to work on long-format documentaries. Her first large project was Arctic Cliffhangers, an hour-long science feature that relayed the findings of 35 years of seabird research and revealed the impacts of climate change on the Arctic marine ecosystem. That production (co-directed with Stephen Smith) — broadcast in many countries around the world — went on to pick up the Best Wildlife Film award at the 2010 San Francisco Ocean Film Festival.

Julia’s latest film Vanishing Point bears witness to the challenges facing indigenous hunting culture in today’s Arctic.  Set in northernmost Greenland and Canada’s Baffin Island, this feature length documentary was awarded Best Production Reflecting Cultural Diversity at the 2013 Alberta Film and Television Awards.

Julia Szucs is a member of the Directors Guild of Canada, a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, and co-founder of Meltwater Media.