Biography

Bretten Hannam is known for Wildhood (2021), North Mountain (2015) and At the Place of Ghosts (2025).

A graduate of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Hannam also studied screenwriting at the Canadian Film Centre in Toronto.

Two-spirit L'nu filmmaker based in Kespukwitk, Mi'kma'ki (Nova Scotia).

In an interview, Hannam explained that their filmmaking is strongly motivated by collaboration with their Indigenous community. One example is their working relationship with the Nova Scotia-based Wabanaki Two Spirit Alliance.

When I'm working on something it's usually a story that's come to me for some reason, and it wants attention. In a weird way they stick around and don't go away until you give them a shape of some kind. I'm fairly sensitive to that when I'm working on something so I try to give it space to unfold and open up as much as possible before I start to move parts of it around and find its form.

Embrace the fact that you're going to make mistakes. In fact, make some bad films. You learn more from the bad ones than the good ones where everything turns out...do those even exist?

I've been making films for just over a decade now, but I've been telling stories longer. I grew up hearing stories from my grandmother, uncles, and family friends. Maybe some that a little kid shouldn't have heard so early, but I think I turned out OK regardless. But that love of stories is something that comes into the films I make.

I'm done with Indigenous and queer characters that are sad or hard all the time.

As I started to make short films, they were inherently queer or Native Indigenous stories, and as I figured out my identity and my community, and where I fit, there were a lot of dissenting voices from different directions - "You can't do that" - and that makes me want to prove them wrong.