DRIFF Alumni Spotlight: Eric Bizzarri

Since 2017, DRIFF has cultivated a space for audiences to engage with diverse filmmakers from the Durham Region, across Canada, and around the globe. Our Alumni Spotlight series highlights the impacts and achievements of past and present DRIFF filmmakers working in media arts today. 

Eric Bizzarri is an award-winning director and producer based in Canada. In 2016 at DRIFF Eric premiered the short, The Shallow End. Since then he has been a prolific producer and director with his work shown at multiple festivals including Diaspora (TIFF, Palm Springs International ShortFest), Desi Standard Time Travel (Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, Tallgrass Film Festival) and Great Seeing You (Miami International Film Festival, Cinefest Sudbury International Film Festival). His latest project The Second premiered at the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival and had its international debut at the 2024 Hawaii International Film Festival.

As a director, Eric’s works include Mea Culpa, Pressure Play and I Wanna Make a Movie or I Wanna Die Trying. These films have premiered at festivals such as TIFF Next Wave, Reykjavik, and Whistler. The films of his have also been showcased on platforms such as CBC, Air Canada, and Amazon Prime.

Through his films Eric explored themes such as masculinity and adolescence, approaching them with empathy and insight. Films invite audiences to have open conversations and Eric’s are no different.

Eric holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film Production with Honours from York University. In addition to producing and directing, he is a co-founder and CEO of the Future of Film Showcase (FOFS) – a Toronto-based film festival now in its twelfth year and dedicated to fostering the future of emerging Canadian filmmakers.

We caught up with Eric to discuss his latest projects and motivations.

First off, we’d like to know, what have you been up to since becoming a DRIFF alumni?

Lots, yeah, lots! It’s been busy. I think I must have been a DRIFF alumni in 2016, I can’t remember exactly but I am a co-founder and CEO of the Future of Film Showcase (FOFS) - that’s a film festival that runs in Toronto. Our mandate is fostering the future of emerging Canadian filmmakers. We’re in our 12th year now. So, I am the co-founder and CEO and that runs out of the Paradise Theatre in Toronto and with industry events at the Archipelago Productions on Sterling Road.

I’ve directed a lot more; I’ve directed a few short films, one of them called Pressure Play. I co-directed another short film called I Wanna Make a Movie or I Wanna Die Trying and then I directed another short called Mea Culpa. So, you know, I’ve increased my portfolio as a director.

As a producer, I’ve produced a number of shorts - Diaspora that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2022; Mea Culpa that I directed screened in 2023 at the Quebec International Film Festival. Desi Standard Time Travel – a short film I produced has screened at festivals all over the world including San Diego and Toronto Reel Asian.

[Future of Film Showcase] has been getting big as well--we’ve expanded the festival to about four days. When I was a DRIFF alumni, it must have been in its infancy – I think it was running for three or four years at that point and now we’re celebrating our twelfth year- June 19 to 22. Today we actually had a few programming announcements which was nice. Recently it was announced that I am one of York University’s top 30 alumni under 30 partly because of this. I think in a nutshell, that’s about it.

Your latest project, The Second, premiered at the 2024 Fantasia Film Festival and had its international debut at the 2024 Hawaii International Film Festival. What was the driving force behind the project?

I was a producer on that, which was directed by Every Frame a Painting creators Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos. They created this series between 2014 to 2016. The series has been pretty acclaimed all over the world. David Fincher ended up connecting with them to direct a couple of episodes of his show Voir on Netflix partly because of its success. Essentially, these two directors pioneered what we know to be video essays.

They start these videos by playing the scene out of a movie and then they talk about “oh, this is how the antagonist was written”, they have analyzed different motives in different films and everything and so, they sort of pioneered that format in the early 2010s. After working with David Fincher on Voir, they ended up deciding that they wanted to try directing a narrative. This ended up becoming The Second and I was brought onto the project because they had never shot a film in Toronto before.

The Second also revolves around themes like toxic masculinity and male-to-male relationships, father-son relationships, and that was also what attracted me to the story – a lot of my work sort of revolves around those themes.

Your work explores complex themes such as toxic masculinity, male-male abuse and the dynamics of adolescence, among others. What do these themes mean to you, and what do you hope audiences take away from your films?

The most important thing that I want audiences to take away from the films that I make is to allow for conversations. For men to investigate their own masculinity and then for people to have conversations surrounding toxic masculinity and what that brings. They should ask themselves the question of, When your trust is betrayed by a friend, a colleague, or a family member--what do you do? What’s your next move? Can that trust ever be rebuilt? Can it be brought back? If so… how long does that take?

Those are the questions that I want audiences to take away from my work while also advocating for conversations they wouldn’t normally have and creating a safe space to have them.

Your films have been showcased on multiple platforms including Air Canada, CBC, Super Channel and Amazon Prime across the US, UK and Germany. How have these achievements impacted your career?

Well, at the end of the day, it is about visibility, right? I think that the greatest thing that these platforms have offered is the fact that when you are making a short, when you are making any sort of project, sometimes what you are making can feel very insular, it can make you feel like you are alone in the process, and oftentimes creatives are, right?

When you are writing something, when you are preparing to direct something, you don’t necessarily start with a team. And so, that’s something that I am very grateful for – the fact that a lot of my films have had platforms for people to watch them on, both online and exhibited at festivals and that’s something that I am very grateful for again because all we want to happen when we are making something is for people to see it, right?

We are not necessarily making it for ourselves. I mean we could be, but also, we want it to be seen, we want to show it to people and we want to be able to have an audience, for people to watch them. And that’s what I am most grateful for, having my work distributed and shown at festivals.

As a director and producer, what's the hardest part about bringing your stories from the page to the screen?

I’d say as a director, a lot of my films have been based on personal experience, and just because it is a personal experience, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to translate well on screen, you know? And that’s the most important thing that I sort of struggle with, is also what about that personal experience is necessary to the story I am trying to tell. Oftentimes, these personal experiences can feel very complex and very nuanced. And so, it’s about what about those experiences people are going to find most interesting, and also, what is the thesis of my film rather than just sharing the entire experience from the beginning to end, what is the thesis of the work that I am trying to show? So, that’s for one thing.

For producing, I would say at the end of the day, when you are a producer, even when you are a director, you are a leader on set; we are in the business of relationships. The hardest thing about doing any of these is managing all of those relationships. You have to imagine - a film could have thirty-forty-plus people on set and the biggest thing is managing all of those relationships; managing all those personalities and ensuring that everybody feels safe and respected. And it’s also about getting into a room and ensuring that creative vision is aligned. It’s kind of a miracle when any of these things get made, especially for how many people you are bringing into the process, if that makes sense.

What inspired you to start using film as a medium to tell stories? 

When I realized that film was a form of therapy. I realized that by sharing my experiences on screen and on paper, I was effectively vomiting out my thoughts and my feelings. I started off in theatre when I was younger, I did it all from when I was a child until I was a teenager and in high school. And when I was in high school, I took part in this theatre program called the ‘Paprika Festival’. The ‘Paprika Festival’ had something called the creator’s unit, and in the creator’s unit we were a group of about fifteen or sixteen people and we all built a play from scratch. We met each other in November of 2012 and then by April of 2013 we had a show built from scratch and what it ended up being was a collection of spoken words, monologues, and various characters we had come up with and we all ended up just sharing - like writing different versions of ourselves into one show. It was called, This Is Your Script and that’s when it sort of dawned on me. Because I used to be an actor, and I would act in theatre and film and stuff like that. And so, then I started wondering, I was like, “oh, putting myself behind the screen actually gives me more agency with what I can write and what I can show, and it also feels more therapeutic if that makes sense because I am in the driver’s seat.

Do you have any advice for aspiring filmmakers out there? 

My mantra is to work with those you love who love you back – I don’t mean love in a romantic way (laughing). I mean when somebody loves you back in a working relationship, it means that they respect your boundaries, it means that they won’t allow you to abuse your own boundaries, and they’ll essentially allow you to show up as yourself and they will respect your time and essentially create a safe, accessible and comfortable place for you to make something. So that’s what I would say: take your time, don’t just make something with someone just to do it. I would say, develop relationships based on humour and empathy and learn who you connect with; take the time to investigate who you connect with and the creatives that you want on your side and take that with you.

And finally, what's one thing you remember from the last time you attended DRIFF? 

Well, it’s funny because not only have I been an alumni of DRIFF, but I also worked as a programmer for about a year and so. I was the director of programming of the Durham Region International Film Festival in 2016. It was 2016 or 2017. That was amazing because I got to learn first-hand on how these festivals operated as I was developing my own in its beginning stages. I got to understand how the festival worked and how the festival operated, the types of people involved and the positions within them.

As a filmmaker-- I just remember there being a very warm and welcoming reception and an environment to share our work. The Q&A was nice; I think we were in some sort of art gallery. That’s what I loved about DRIFF at the time, because then again, you know, there were multiple days of programming, and it was inspiring to see all the different types of programs that a festival can have. It really helped me to understand how a festival operated, and I was just grateful to be a part of it.

Alina Mitrofanova is a Creative Writing and English student from Toronto with a passion for film and literature.

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