Fathom Film Group is pleased to announce The Defector: Escape from North Korea won three Canadian Screen Awards at last night’s Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television ceremony: Best Documentary Program, Best Direction in a Documentary Program and the Academy’s Diversity Award. A great team win! It’s a testament to the incredible talent that came together to make this film. Heartfelt congratulations to: Director of Photography – STEPHEN CHUNG Supervising Editor and Co-Writer

The Defector is the proud winner of the 2014 Diversity Award from the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television. The Defector is not an easy story to tell, and required a diverse and resourceful team to pull it off. We are very happy to be recognized for our unique team’s talents as a prime example of the Canadian film and television industry. Along with winning the Diversity Award, The Defector is nominated for two Canadian Screen Awards – Best Documentary Program and Best Dir

The Defector: Escape from North Korea has been nominated for two Canadian Screen Awards in the Television category – “Best Documentary Program” and “Best Direction in a Documentary Program.” The nominations follow The Defector: Interactive’s recent Digi Award win. As media attention is drawn towards the high profile celebrities currently venturing to North Korea, The Defector gets an inside perspective on those risking their lives to flee from the starvation and oppression of

The Defector has been listed as one of the top Canadian films of 2013 by Huffington Post and MovieFone: “Director and centrepiece for the documentary, Ann Shin, is an inspiration. Not only does she draw critical attention to a very urgent issue (the defection of North Koreans), she actually gets as close as she can to the actual defection route – which is way more complicated as you can imagine.” A great way to end 2013 – Happy New Year! http://news.moviefone.ca/2013/12/30/be

Last night in Toronto, Next Media Events hosted their annual Digi Awards to celebrate the companies, products and people making waves in the digital media industry. We are proud to announce that The Defector Interactive won the award for Best in Cross Platform Non-Fiction! If you have haven’t yet had the chance to use the Interactive, you can still check it out – experience.thedefectormovie.com Thank you to everyone that took the time to vote in the online poll, we might neve

After months of touring the festival circuit, we are very excited for our TVO television broadcast premiere! Catch The Defector on TVO in one of these five time-slots (all EST): Wednesday, June 26th at 9:00pm & 12:00am Thursday, June 27th at 9:00pm Friday, June 28th at 10:30pm Sunday, June 30th at 10:00pm The Art Director’s Club in NYC will be hosting a screening of The Defector this Thursday , June 27th at 7:00pm. We invite you to join Ann Shin and Jam3 for a screening, Q&A,

The Defector is on the Front Page of the NYTimes today! An exclusive OpDocs piece was prepared for the NYTimes and it spent the morning claiming the front-and-center space on the front page. The feature builds awareness about the Nine young North Korean defectors who were captured in Laos last week and repatriated back to North Korea through China. They range in age from 14 to 22, and are said to be orphaned Kotjebi. They are among tens of thousands of defectors living in hid

After three sold out screenings of The Defector: Escape from North Korea, our Canadian premiere at Hot Docs has come to a close. We would like to thank everyone that came out, all those in the line-ups spanning around the block, and in the packed audiences. The amazing reception has made this our most successful premiere yet! We had lots of outstanding press from The CBC, CTV News Canada, Global News, The Toronto Star, and Random House as well as some great response from blog

We are very excited to announce that The Defector will officially be having its Canadian Premiere at Canada’s International Documentary Film Festival – Hot Docs – this April! We invite you to attend one of our three screenings: Sat, Apr 27 – 9:00 PM           Scotiabank Theatre, Cinema 4 Mon, Apr 29 – 3:30 PM        Scotiabank Theatre, Cinema 5 Sat, May 4 – 6:30 PM                                               The Regent For all of our Toronto supporters who missed the world

Check out Jordan Ginsberg’s interview with Ann Shin about North Korea’s “tourism,” latest provocative threats, and making The Defector. “Most defectors not only agree, they’re bitterly angry about it. I’ve heard many different defectors call Kim Jong-il the biggest “gangster thief” in the world, saying they’ve been robbed of their lives by their dictator.” -Ann Shin Read the full interview here! #northkorean #interactivedocumentary #kimjongil #annshin #fathomfilmgroup #doc #n

10 Tips from Kim Jong-Il About Interactive Docs Tuesday, March 12, 2013 – 2pm Austin Convention Center Austin Suite 10 important tips you need to know when making a web doc, by award-winning agency Jam3 and Fathom Film Group (and of course Kim Jong-Il). We give the inside scoop on how to get funding, how to leverage assets in a transmedia project and all the do’s and don’t we learned in the school of hard knocks. #northkorean #interactivedocumentary #HannahDonegan #kimjongil

We’re also delighted to announce that our DP – Stephen Chung – has been nominated for Best Documentary Cinematography for the 56th Annual Canadian Society of Cinematographers’ Awards for his amazing work on The Defector: Escape from North Korea. Please join us in congratulating him. We’ll keep you posted as the drum rolls… Upcoming Festivals for The Defector: SXSW Interactive Festival, Austin, Texas, March 8-17 Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival, Greece, March 15

Following the successful launch of The Defector Interactive Experience on Tuesday, February 19, 2013, The Defector has been generating a lot of buzz. It was AdAge’s #1 Pick of the Day, and Fast Company’s Rae Ann Fera writes in her  Co.CREATE article: It’s in this need to build awareness–about human rights atrocities, abuse of power, and the plight of a suffering nation–where interactive storytelling conceived in tandem with a linear documentary can make a significant impact.

Fathom Film Group, in collaboration with digital production and design agency Jam3, is pleased to announce the launch of THE DEFECTOR: ESCAPE FROM NORTH KOREA INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE. Tumen River Crossing – The Defector Interactive The online web-doc takes users inside the gripping reality of living in North Korea today, allowing you to experience first-hand the brave attempts of those trying to escape. The online experience is based on the true stories of six North Korean def

In an interview with ReelWorld Film Festival, director/producer Ann Shin talks about the experience she had pitching The Defector: Escape from North Korea at the Hot Docs Forum, and gives some advice for those getting ready to pitch. “It was completely nerve wracking,” said Shin. “There are more than 20 people listening to your pitch and the responses of the first two people can affect how the rest of the people respond.  The mood can change and you have no idea which way it’

TVO continues to champion great documentaries and has created an online studio that takes you behind the scenes with featured documentaries. Ann Shin was invited to discuss the importance of making The Defector: Escape From North Korea. “As a Korean-Canadian, I was in a unique position to get intimate access into North Korean stories and to tell it to a Western audience. I started meeting with North Korean defector in Toronto, and learned about a vast global network of people

TORONTO, ON (October 15, 2012) – Toronto-based Fathom Film Group is pleased to announce its latest production, THE DEFECTOR: Escape from North Korea, will premiere at the prestigious International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) The festival, now in its 25th year, runs from November 14-25. The feature-length documentary film was selected for the “Reflecting Images – Panorama” stream of films, which means it will be eligible for the IDFA Audience Award. IDFA selects

Avoiding CCTV cameras and meeting a ‘snakehead’ – some of the things Director Ann Shin will be talking about on AM770 in Toronto, 4pm, Saturday, Dec 10. Lessons the crew learned on our recent undercover shoot trip in Asia for our cross-platform documentary ‘The Defector: Escape from North Korea.’ #northkorean #cctv #kimjongil #annshin #fathomfilmgroup #doc #northkorea #surveillance #china #jongil #defectors #documentary #defector #transmedia #crossplatform

Fathom Film Group welcomes Heidi Tao Yang to THE DEFECTOR as a producer trainee, thanks to the latest mentoring effort by the Canadian Media Production Association (CMPA) in partnership with Telefilm Canada. The Telefilm producer trainee program targets emerging and mid-level producers from a visible minority or aboriginal background. Heidi earned a Bachelor of Commerce at Ryerson University, studied Film and Television Production at Humber College, and in 2008, she was invit

The Rogers Documentary Fund, operated by Rogers Documentary and Cable Network Fund, has awarded $1.6 million in grants to 25 doc projects, in a move that it is calling “an unprecedented show of support for independent documentary producers.” Among the 42 docs receiving funding from the Rogers Documentary Fund in 2011 is THE DEFECTOR: Escape from North Korea. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter! Read more: http://playbackonline.ca/2011/10/19/rogers-documentary-fund-announces-mor