Karen Harnisch

Photo of Karen Harnisch

Assistant Professor The Creative School School of Image Arts Toronto, Ontario kharnisc@torontomu.ca Office: (416) 979-5000 ext. 556877

Bio/Research

Karen Harnisch (she/her) is a feature film producer and Co-President of Film Forge, a production company she leads with writer/director Andrew Cividino. Karen produced Cividino’s SLEEPING GIANT which premiered at Cannes at Semaine de la Critique (Critics' Week) and won the Best Canadian First Fe...

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Bio/Research

Karen Harnisch (she/her) is a feature film producer and Co-President of Film Forge, a production company she leads with writer/director Andrew Cividino. Karen produced Cividino’s SLEEPING GIANT which premiered at Cannes at Semaine de la Critique (Critics' Week) and won the Best Canadian First Feature Award at TIFF. Karen has since produced Calvin Thomas and Yonah Lewis’ psychological drama WHITE LIE, Antoine Bourges' FAIL TO APPEAR, Drew Lint's M/M and the tornado disaster film 13 MINUTES, written and directed by Lindsay Gossling. In 2021, Karen is producing Brandon Cronenberg's third feature film INFINITY POOL, an international co-production with support from Eurimages and Telefilm Canada, and is developing the limited series CUTBLOCK, written and directed by Cividino and Trey Edward Shults, for HBO. In addition to her lead producing credits, Karen has worked as a line producer and production executive on independent, studio- and streamer-backed films and television series. She is an alumna of TIFF Studio, the EAVE Producers Workshop and The Torino Film Lab, and a recipient of a SSHRC grant for her master's thesis: “Today’s Film Students, Tomorrow’s Producers: The Role of Critical Media Literacy in Canada’s Future Cinema”. Her academic and research interests include the pedagogy of film production, strategies for dismantling structural inequity in the film industry, and critical media literacy as it applies to screen-based education.

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