The DSO is glad to announce that, with support from Ontario Creates and the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF), we’re bringing a delegation of five disabled creatives to VIFF 2026!
Learn more about our delegates:
Adrienne Lindsay is a Vancouver-based writer, producer, voice director and casting director with more than 15 years of experience collaborating on character-driven stories across animation, games and premium audio. Her credits include CoComelon Lane, Strawberry Shortcake: Berry in the Big City, Super Team Canada, The Bravest Knight, Chip & Potato and Audible's Middlebridge Mysteries. Throughout her career, she has worked with writers, directors and performers to shape story and character from development through production. She is now focused on creating original animated and scripted series that pair distinctive Canadian settings with humour, mystery and emotionally grounded characters.
Ana Pacheco is a Vancouver-based writer and filmmaker passionate about character-driven stories that explore the real world minutia of what it means to be human. Her short “The Star of Therapy” was nominated for the Golden Sheaf Award for best comedy in 2020, and her MAMM film “Grandma Lee’s Dress” placed Top 3 in CBC’s Short Film Face Off. She is currently developing her debut feature “Exposure Therapy,” a dark comedy inspired by her struggles with contamination OCD, about a young woman who decides to become a sugar baby in order to pay for treatment.
Helene Taylor is a Canadian screenwriter and creative producer telling female-driven, genre-blending stories about outsiders navigating authority. An alumna of the WFF Talent Labs, Pacific Screenwriters Program, The Orchard Project, and The Writers Lab Canada, she has developed series with support from the IPF, Bell Fund, Creative BC, and the Alberta Media Fund. Five of her projects were optioned in 2026, and she is co-creator and co-showrunner of the horror anthology REEL SCARED (Kate Green Productions), going to camera this summer. Her two decades of experience span Canada and New York, above and below the line.
Kagan Goh is a Vancouver-based multidisciplinary artist working across filmmaking, memoir, spoken word poetry, playwriting, and stand-up comedy. A self-identified Mad Artist and Outsider Artist guided by the principle "Nothing about us without us," he has been a fixture of Vancouver's slam and spoken word community for over 30 years, earning the nickname "the bipolar poet laureate." His published works include Who Let in the Sky? (Select Books, 2012) and Surviving Samsara (Caitlin Press, 2021), shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize. His film Common Law won the Stigma Breaker Award at Mental Filmness Festival 2025. He is currently adapting Surviving Samsara into the TV series A Delicate Imbalance.
Lauren Saarimaki is a Toronto-based film producer, educator, and mental health advocate working at the intersection of storytelling and social impact. They manage programs & operations at POV Film, where they design and implement training for emerging, equity-deserving creatives. Their producing credits include Express (TIFF 2023), Streams Flow from a River (Canneseries 2023), and The Lion Does Not Concern Himself (TIFF 2026). They are the co-founder and Vice President of Operations at Toronto-based production company Area V5 Pictures. Lauren is passionate about building safer, more inclusive working conditions in the film industry and creating stories that spark change.
