The 2025 Leo Awards were held at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Vancouver on July 12th and 13th. Sheona McDonald was nominated for Best Documentary Series and Best Direction for a Documentary Series with Transplant Stories..
Here is our conversation with Sheona McDonald
HNMAG: Are you in Vancouver right now?
Sheona McDonald: I am in Vancouver. I live by Horseshoe Bay.
HNMAG: Horseshoe Bay, ok. You’re ready to get to Vancouver Island, Bowen, or the Sunshine Coast at any moment.
Sheona McDonald: It’s possible for sure. It’s kind of the best of both worlds. You can be downtown in 20 minutes, or you can also be on Bowen Island in 20 minutes.
HNMAG: When did you become interested in Film and Television?
Sheona McDonald: I did some acting as a teenager, mostly in theatre in Vancouver. I got an agent at Characters. I auditioned for Film and TV but without much success. Then, I went to Europe for fifteen months. When I came back in the mid-90s, I did a media program at Capilano College. In that program, I made a couple of documentaries. I moved to Toronto for thirteen years. I fell into working as a script supervisor.
HNMAG: How did that happen?
Sheona McDonald: I was doing a practicum for the program I was in at Cap. I reached out to Camelia Frieberg who introduced me to a world of people making movies in Toronto. John Grayson was doing a feature, and he needed crew. It was called Uncut. I’m very organized and have a bit of a photographic memory so it just worked out…
HNMAG: You have the aptitude for that.
Sheona McDonald: I did that for about eight years on commercials and TV shows.
HNMAG: Early on, you worked on The Sweet Hereafter. Did you come back to BC for that?
Sheona McDonald: No, that was in Toronto. I worked in the production office.
HNMAG: How did you transition from being a script supervisor to working in documentary?
Sheona McDonald: It was a long road. I had made a documentary while in school called Breaking the Cycle. It was about domestic violence in the Indigenous community. A group of men in a BC prison saw it. They wanted to tell their stories to benefit youth. I ended up working for five years with murderers in prisons in BC. The project was called Lifers: stories from prison.
HNMAG: You did this from Toronto?
Sheona McDonald: It was in British Columbia, but I was living in Ontario, so I was coming back and forth. I finished it around 2000, and then we sold it to the CBC.
HNMAG: You did everything on that?
Sheona McDonald: I had the energy to look for funding from every available source. I landed up getting the last bit of money from the Justice Department. I was very resourceful.
I finished that in 2000. In 2003, I had a daughter. Then in 2007, after the birth of my second child, I realized that I wanted to get out of the long days of script supervising and back to documentary.
A friend of mine, who I met when I was pregnant, lost her child, stillborn at term. Watching her go through that experience inspired me to make a film Capturing a Short Life about families dealing with the loss of an infant in the first few months of life.
That was the film that helped me transition back to factual.
HNMAG: With some success and a relationship with the CBC, you moved back to BC and continued to work on documentaries.
Sheona McDonald: I moved back in 2009, after 13 years in Toronto. I did a short narrative for the Olympics called Momentum. It was the second short film I’d made; prior to that, I made a mockumentary called Documentary Bootcamp.
HNMAG: Was Momentum for 2010?
Sheona McDonald: Yes, for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver and Whistler.
HNMAG: Your relationship with CBC grew stronger.
Sheona McDonald: Fortunately, I had a good relationship with the CBC. I made a film about a group of guys who built a human-powered ornithopter When Dreams Take Flight. Following that, a film that was supposed to be about women’s relationship to pornography, and it turned out to be more about female sexuality and shame.
HNMAG: That was Inside Her Sex.
Sheona McDonald: Yes. I was then asked to develop a film about men. I ended up producing it with Telus Storyhive, it’s called A Short Essay on Men.
HNMAG: Do you have a takeaway from those two subjects?
Sheona McDonald: They are very different approaches. The one about men was more about how men build and sustain friendships.
HNMAG: It wasn’t about male sexuality.
Sheona McDonald: No, not sure I’d be qualified to make that.
I was always trying to get out of making documentaries because it’s really hard.
HNMAG: You try to leave, and they keep pulling you back in.
Sheona McDonald: Yes, documentary is such hard work and doesn’t pay all that well. It’s challenging to build momentum. In 2012, I started to work more on other people’s shows. I was the show runner for Anna and Christina’s Grocery Bag. It was a smart lifestyle series. Talked about recipes, products, etc.
HNMAG: Was it on CBC?
Sheona McDonald: Maybe W? As a show runner, I discovered that my job was to find people who did their job really well and my love of collaboration really deepened. It was around that time I decided that if I was going to stay in the industry I would only work on good projects with good people and a paycheque.
From there I was able to strike a precarious balance of doing my own work and working on other people’s projects and I found a new love for the work.
In 2018, I was at the Whistler Film Festival. I was having dinner with a woman who worked at the Documentary Channel. I didn’t have anything to pitch. Then I mentioned cryptocurrency in passing, and her response was “Go get money for that, or I’ll give it to someone else.” I got some pre-development money from Telefilm. I started to work on it, and I was terribly bored, very challenged to find a project that would be engaging about cryptocurrency. I was about to give the money back. Then Gerald Cotten, who was running one of the few Canadian crypto exchanges, died at thirty years old in India, and was the only one who had the keys to the crypto exchange. As soon as I saw news of his death, I knew that was why I had the money and that I had to make a film about it.
HNMAG: Was the death suspicious?
Sheona McDonald: Yeah! It was a great story, and the film is called Dead Man’s Switch a crypto mystery. It was fun to make and did really well.
HNMAG: You’ve been nominated previously, and you’ve won Leo Awards. How do you feel about that recognition?
Sheona McDonald: Previously, I’d won for one of my favourite films, Into Light, a short i made with the NFB and Dead Man’s Switch a crypto mystery.
Transplant Stories was a great experience. Everything came together well. Everyone was terrific. It was very positive. I worked with a lot of people doing very positive and inspiring work. I appreciate the recognition. I don’t mind not winning. It’s complicated, and I don’t put a lot of stock into it. We also came away with the best Leo photo, which I really love. Andy Bely, won for his editing on the series and I tried to steal his award.
HNMAG: Scripted film and TV made in Vancouver is usually not set in Vancouver. That is starting to change. Will that change grow?
Sheona McDonald: Maybe. It depends on the funding streams, tax incentives…
HNMAG: Are US audiences open to Canada being so similar in many ways, but then presenting a unique story?
Sheona McDonald: Quebec is able to make amazing content for its own system, which is working well.
HNMAG: Quebec has a language difference where they make content in French and can get international sales from audiences that will read subtitles. What is your next project?
Sheona McDonald: I pitched a drama series, and I’m waiting to hear back. A local company has an option in it so we’ll see what happens with that.
I’ve just agreed to help produce a feature documentary about Stephen Lewis. And there are a couple of documentary series underway that should keep me busy for the foreseeable future.
Sheona McDonald is a brilliant producer, writer, director. She has been able to make compelling, entertaining, and critically well-received documentaries. Sheona has a wonderful push-pull relationship with documentaries, as they are very challenging and not financially beneficial but also allow her to explore unique and exceptional worlds and meet remarkable people. We will let you know how things go with her series. We are crossing our fingers that Sheona will bring more success to our industry around the world with strong Canadian content.