Asia Youngman

Asia Youngman is an award-winning Indigenous director and screenwriter from Vancouver, Canada. Her films have screened at a variety of Oscar-qualifying festivals including the Toronto International Film Festival, the St. Louis International Film Festival, and the imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival. Prior to winning “Best Director” and “Best Short Film” in 2021 at the Vancouver Short Film Festival with her latest documentary THIS INK RUNS DEEP, she also took home the award for “Best Short Documentary” at the Calgary International Film Festival in 2019. Asia has worked on numerous film and television projects commissioned by CBC, Bell Media, TVO, PBS, Telus, History Channel, and Corus Entertainment. In 2020 Asia directed an episode of ODD SQUAD: MOBILE UNIT for Sinking Ship Entertainment and was also named one of Playback’s “10 to Watch” in Canada. Asia was the recipient of the 2021 Directors Guild of Canada BC Emerging Greenlight with her upcoming short fantasy/drama N’XAXAITK and was selected to participate in the Amazon Studios ISO Pitch Program with a television series that she is co-creating. Her latest film HATHA received support from the Harold Greenberg Fund and Creative BC through the BC Shorts Program and premiered at the 40th Vancouver International Film Festival. She is currently in production with Disney’s ESPN on an upcoming feature film and recently signed a blind television deal with Entertainment One.

Asia is an alumna from the TIFF Filmmaker Lab, the TIFF Talent Accelerator, the Canadian Academy Directors Program for Women, the Berlinale DocSalon Toolbox Programme and the Netflix-BANFF Diversity of Voices Initiative.