Aisling Chin-Yee

Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Aisling Chin-Yee (born 29 April 1982) is a Canadian film director, writer, and producer. She is mixed Jamaican-Chinese and Irish. In 2004, Chin-Yee graduated from Concordia University with a degree in Communication Studies and a minor in Film Studies, concentrating in film production, theory, and analysis. In 2006, Chin-Yee started her career as associate producer at the National Film Board of Canada. In 2010, she joined Prospector Films as producer. She runs Fluent Films, a film and television production studio. Her first directorial effort was the short film, Sound Asleep, which premiered at the 2014 Lucerne International Film Festival. The following year, her documentary film, Synesthesia, won the award for Best Short Documentary at the Crossroads Film Festival. Along with Mia Kirshner and Freya Ravensbergen, Chin-Yee co-created the #AfterMeToo movement in 2016, which includes a fund, roundtable series, and report in partnership with the Canadian Women's Foundation. In 2018, she was selected in the inaugural cohort of the nonprofit Take The Lead's 50 Women Can Change the World in Media and Entertainment. Her directorial debut feature film, The Rest of Us, premiered at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival. That year, Chin-Yee received the TIFF Canning Fellowship. She was nominated for best feature film editing by the Canadian Cinema Editors. In 2020, she co-directed the documentary feature film No Ordinary Man, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and was named one of the TIFF Top Ten films for the year. It won the Best Canadian Feature Film award at Toronto's Inside Out LGBTQ Film Festival, along with awards at three other film festivals. Chin-Yee is a Berlinale Talent Alumni, a Rotterdam Producer's Network Alumni, a Tribeca Film Institute Alumni, TIFF Filmmaker Lab, and was part of the 2017 Academy Women Directors' Program.