Leslie Ann Coles

Coles is an award-winning director. She works in scripted and unscripted material. When working with scripted material, she understands actors’ artistic processes intuitively, having trained and worked as an actor. She gravitates to realism and nuanced characters and enjoys stories with compelling, character-driven dialogue and action. In the documentary landscape, she excels at conducting and directing interviews. "The Curtain" that Coles wrote, produced and directed is screening in the international film festival circuit where it's garnering awards for Best Director, Best International Short and Best Actress, to name a few. Coles recently shot a POC for her half hr. comedy series, "Fran & Judy" which is being pitched to networks. In the feature landscape, Coles' female -driven western "Soiled Dove" has won 12 international screenwriter awards most recently the Big Apple Screenwriter competition and is a quarterfinalist with The Writers Lab (NYC) that Nicole Kidman and Meryl Streep support. Telefilm Canada and Ontario Creates supported its development.

Her multi-award-winning debut feature documentary “Melody Makers” – and companion interactive digital media (IDM) – was released in 2019 with the support of Telefilm Canada and licensed by CBC The Documentary Channel.

A key strength is her ability to creatively strategize projects with collaborators during the development and pre-production phase, always with a critical understanding of a project's milieu.

Formerly a modern dancer/choreographer of 18 years, Coles is an alumna of the Women in the Director’s Chair program (WIDC) and a member of the Directors Guild of Canada (DGC), Writers Guild of Canada (WGC) and ACTRA Toronto.