Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers

Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers is a writer, director, producer, and actor. She is a member of the Kainai First Nation (Blackfoot Confederacy) as well as Sámi from Norway. She co-wrote and co-directed the narrative feature The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open with Kathleen Hepburn, which premiered at the Berlinale in 2019 and received Toronto and Vancouver Film Critics’ Association awards for best Canadian film. The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open was also nominated for six Canadian Screen Awards; Tailfeathers and Hepburn received the awards for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. 

Tailfeathers’ feature documentary Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy, won the 2022 Canadian Screen Award for Best Feature Length Documentary. More recently she received the 2024 Canadian Screen Award for Best Direction in a Drama Series and 2023 DGC Award Outstanding Directorial Achievement In A Dramatic Series for her work on Crave’s Little Bird limited series. Her television directing credits also include CTV/Crave’s Acting Good, the CW’s Sherlock and Daughter, and Crave’s Thunder Bay.

Tailfeathers is an alumni of the Berlinale Talent Lab, the Hot Docs' Accelerator Lab, the CFC/NFB/Ford Foundation Open Immersion Lab, and is a recipient of the Sundance Institute's Merata Mita Fellowship. She is currently a fellow in the TIFF Writers' Studio working on her next narrative feature.