There is no doubt that Kari Skogland is one of Canada's most verstile filmmakers, having worked in a great variety of genres and mediums.

This year's thriller/drama "Fifty Dead Men Walking" (starring Sir Ben Kingsley, Jim Sturgess, Kevin Zegers) is written, directed, and produced by Skogland. It has premiered at a Gala at the Toronto International Film Festival 2008, won Critics Top Ten, won the Vancouver Film Festival top prize and earned Skogland a DGC Best Director Award. The film is presently nominated for 7 Genie awards and was also nominated for a Spirit Award.

Skogland's previous film (also as director, writer, producer), an adaptation of the best selling book "The Stone Angel", starring Ellen Burstyn, Ellen Page, premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2007 – Skogland was nominated for DGC Best Director/Best Film and several Genies including Best Actress and WGC for Best Screenplay, it won a Genie for Best Music. Not surprisingly, she was named by Hollywood Reporter as one of its "Ten Directors to Watch" for her debut as writer-director of Liberty Stands Still.

Skogland's career began in Canada by directing award winning commercials and music videos. She then moved into television where she started with the enormously successful and multi-award winning series Traders (nominated for 9 Geminis including Best Director and won Best Series). White Lies, a movie for CBC, was nominated for several Geminis and an International Emmy and won a Tout Ecran. Her films The Size of Watermelons starring Donal Logue and Paul Rudd, Men With Guns starring Donal Logue and Callum Keith Rennie, Liberty Stands Still (written by Kari as well) starring Wesley Snipes and Linda Fiorentino, have all screened and won awards at major festivals in Canada (Toronto FF, Montreal FF), the US (Slamdance, Chicago, Houston, USA, New York, Cinequest, Seattle) and around the world. She was also nominated a for a DGC best director and a Gemini for her work on The 11th Hour -CTV and for her film Chicks With Sticks and won the DGC Best Director for her work on the mini-series Terminal City. Kari was the honoured director at the 2008 Female Eye Film Festival.

First Weekend Club's Katherine Brodsky caught up with Kari Skogland to discuss her multiple Genie Nominations this year for "Fifty Dead Men Walking", including a nod for Best Director.

Congratulations on your Genie Award nominations! What does it mean for you to have "Fifty Dead Men Walking" receive these nominations?

Thanks so much, of course it is fantastic to have my work noticed by my peers. Making any film is a tremendously difficult thing to accomplish and there are many ways it can go sideways so, it is part of my role as the director to keep the vision and hope like hell I get it right -to have the results validated at any level is of course a terrific sense of accomplishment. It also gives my future partners in film a sense of confidence in my ability to create a watch-able movie so there is a practical side to it as well.

Recently, Kathryn Bigelow was the first female director to win an Academy Award - what was your reaction to that? 

Well, I do a lot of advocating for women directors as we are a very under represented gender in our industry so, it was like the arrow hitting the bulls eye.  It was a great film and she busted any notion that women can't direct action so, I hope it is a crack in what has been until now, a heavily guarded door.

Why do you think it took so long? Are things similar or different in Canada?  

Hollywood is a very big machine, fueled by box office results. So, while any film is a gamble, Hollywood tries to hedge it's bets and of course track record becomes everything when financing your film.  It is very hard for a female to build a sellable track record if she can't get access to making films in the first place so it's a bit of a catch 22.  In Canada, because we were becoming dwarfed by our big neighbour to the south,  we are blessed with a system that has been  building it's filmmakers via Telefilm for several decades now.  Telefilm will support a filmmaker - no gender issue - with a developed vision and nurture that filmmaker as they grow.  It is now paying off as we have some  internationally recognized Filmmakers, and many of them are women so, we are ahead of the curve so to speak, by virtue of a more progressive notion on how to build an industry in the shadow an over powering Hollywood machine.  It should also be noted that the Toronto Film Festival - probably the second most important festival in the world (second to Cannes), has also always supported women as filmmakers so it has consistently given them a very important platform - all this is critical to the recognition of a filmmaker in general, and particularly critical for marginalized groups, ethnic filmmakers and women.

"50 Dead Men Walking" is not typically the sort of movie that the public tends to associate with female filmmakers - yet you wrote the script, directed the film, helped produce it & got a Genie nomination for directing it to boot... Why does it come as a surprise when a woman directs a film in that sort of genre?

Fifty was a synthesis of my sensibilities - it has deep human drama, high stakes, topical: it is politically important for us as a society to examine events like these from the past , and on top of all that, some hot action which is always challenging to execute.  I suspect many other women would also be inclined to direct movies like this, but I've had the fortune to build up a body of work that introduced me to all the different sensibilities I would have to draw on for this film.  

How did you come to work on Fifty Dead Men? What sparked the interest in you?

A friend and one of the Exec Producers brought me the book. I loved the true voice, it was from an angle I had not considered before when thinking about "The Troubles"; an "every man"  forced to examine his own morals and ethics who becomes a hero because for him, there is no other choice but to save lives no matter what the politics.  I grew up with the Irish conflict as a back drop to the news, much like Iraq is to our kids today but, I never had a real understanding of the issues at hand, or how this could have happened in our "enlightened/democratic" western society.  So, when I read the book, my curiosity and politics were engaged and I knew I had to tell this story as a filmmaker because it was very relevant in today's landscape of religious conflict.

What were the challenges in basing a film on a true-life-account?  Obviously one of them involved Martin McGartland's denouncing some of the liberties that the film takes with his story...

Well, Martin as it turned out, had a very political agenda for the film, one I did not share. I wanted to tell the human drama and not get into whether the cause and the struggle was good or bad, who was right or wrong - this movie was about murky truths, how in war, truth is the first casualty.  I think also, he had personal anxiety as we got closer to the premier as to how it would be embraced, not only by the critics, but by his family back in Belfast who he cannot visit.  Once he saw the film, I am told he got very emotional and liked it very much, in any case, he recanted his concerns immediately

Your previous feature before "50 Dead Men Walking" was "The Stone Angel" - a completely different genre and your work in general has a lot of variety in it... Why do you have such a variety in your genres?

Well, people started to pin me to a very specific style and look, but for the most part, these were not movies I had written and I was feeling off track. I think as I have entered my middle years, I have found my voice as a filmmaker and the stories I feel compelled to tell. I'd be uninterested in my own work if I was telling the same story again and again so, I hope each one is different and represents a bit of my own curiosity as I explore uncharted territory whether it be political, emotional, ironic or just plain fun.  I think I will always look for material that has soul and that can be meaningful because I am very type an and am conscious of how little time we have so, I don't want to spend my energy on material that is not going to provoke me in some deeper way.

"50 Dead Men Walking" is a story that takes place in Ireland and Great Britain - what is the Canadian connection? What makes it a Canadian film (aside from you being Canadian), or relevant to Canadian audiences? 

Well, I believe we Canadians have a unique perspective on war and peace so when we look at an issue/story, I'd like to think we come at it sideways allowing an audience to jump aboard without the baggage of a more black and white, Indians vs. Cowboys mentality.  I also think there is a lot of British and Irish heritage in Canada that has helped shape the country so, there are many roots that would suggest Canadians have an interest in knowing this past.  More to the point, are Canadians not curious about the world? I believe they are so, if a Canadian goes to India, or Australia or Cuba to explore and come back to Canada with a story to tell, I hope that is what we developed and invested in our creative industry to be able to achieve. Of course we want to continue to tell stories that are core Canadiana, whether old or new, but, isn't the goal of a sophisticated culture and community to import new and interesting ideas / entertainment alongside the more traditional stories? Fifty is about  a man who has to make impossible decisions and discovers that at the end of the day, he's the only reflection in his mirror. That cautionary tale is as relevant to a young man or woman on Hastings in downtown Vancouver as it is to a soldier just leaving for Aghanistan or a banker on Bay St.  We are a diverse culture, I believe our stories should reflect that.  Can you imagine if someone said to Danny Boyle - hmmm...you're British and there is British money invested in this movie called Slumdog Millionaire you want to make so, good god,  you better not do it because it's not a British story....

What's next for you?

I have adapted a book called The Prisoner of Tehran, a true story that takes place during the first wave of the Islamic Revolution, another story I hope told from a unique Canadian perspective on a subject we in the western world are living with in the news every day and perhaps need a little insight to decode.