shots Unsigned: Amélie Hardy

Director Amélie Hardy's cinematic approach combines humanity, aesthetic sensitivity, and ingenuity.

Hardy is a Canadian director who made her mark in the cinema world by directing several short films and series (Hello Stranger, About Memory and Loss, Ordinary Life Chronicles, Happy Life, and Train Hopper.

Her hard-hitting charity commercial Safe Spaces for The Canadian Centre For Child Protection showcases her documentary making talents, and we took the chance to ask Hardy about her career below.

Can you tell us a little about your background and your route into directing?

I guess it all began when I was a kid, already filming anything that moved around me. I had this instinct to watch, to notice things, the tiny details of everyday life, people in their routines, those larger-than-life characters you meet by chance. Maybe it was also my way of holding onto moments before they disappeared.

Over the years, that way of looking at the world naturally led me toward documentary filmmaking. I’ve always been endlessly curious about other people, especially those whose lives are completely different from mine. I love imagining their joys, their heartbreaks, their secrets, their dreams. I think that comes from my mom, who spent her life as a psychologist, listening to people’s stories. I definitely inherited her fascination with humanity.

On the other hand, my dad was an architect, so I also grew up surrounded by shapes, materials, and design. From him, I learned to love composition, structure, and the beauty of lines. In a way, those two worlds, human and aesthetic, just came together and pulled me toward filmmaking. Cinema became the perfect place to bring them both alive: to observe and understand, but also to frame, to compose, to create my own way of telling stories.

I’ve always been endlessly curious about other people, especially those whose lives are completely different from mine.

Did you study filmmaking? How did you learn your craft?

I studied filmmaking in Montreal, at UQAM, where I specialised in editing. My first professional years were spent as an editor, working on a variety of projects, fiction, documentaries, and even commercials. Editing is an incredible school for storytelling; it teaches you how to shape a narrative, how to play with time and emotion. Rhythm has always been essential to me.

At some point, though, I had to take the leap and step into the world of shooting, something that used to intimidate me. The editing room felt like a refuge, a comfortable space for creation, while being on set felt more like going into battle. But with time, through many different projects, both artistic and commissioned, that battlefield slowly turned into a playground.

I think that early fear of shooting actually shaped the way I work today. It made me develop a method based on being extremely prepared. That’s key for me. There’s something about precision, hard work, and navigating doubt right up until the very last minute that I find deeply fertile, that’s often where the most meaningful creative breakthroughs happen.

The editing room felt like a refuge, a comfortable space for creation, while being on set felt more like going into battle

Would you say you have a directing style? How did you arrive at it?

Over time, I’ve realised that a stronger signature has emerged in my work than I ever expected. I’ve developed a visual and audio language that keeps evolving from one project to the next, but there are definitely strong stylistic threads running through everything I do.

My projects are almost always grounded in a documentary approach, but I like to say it’s a romanticised one. Everything in the story is real, but cinema gives us the tools to elevate reality, to create something grand and emotionally resonant. I love taking small, seemingly ordinary moments, fragments of everyday life that might otherwise go unnoticed, and amplifying them until they become deeply moving.

Even though my work is rooted in reality, I enjoy flirting with fiction. I like to magnify the truth, to give it that slightly larger-than-life dimension. I believe that’s how audiences connect most strongly, when emotion feels both authentic and heightened.

That same philosophy guides my commercial work too. I always try to bring humanity and sensitivity into the stories brands want to tell. Emotion, to me, is still the most powerful way to reach people, to make them feel something real.

And of course, visual and sound finesse are always essential to me. I love blending genres and mediums to bring a sense of freshness and surprise to each story I tell.

I always try to bring humanity and sensitivity into the stories brands want to tell. 

What was the inspiration behind your film Safe Spaces?

A project that touched me deeply was the Safe Spaces campaign, created in collaboration with the agency No Fixed Adress. It was an extremely sensitive mandate: raising awareness about the devastating impact of cyberbullying on young people—consequences as tragic as severe depression, assault, or even suicide. The entire campaign was built around the testimonies of mothers whose children had been victims. It was impossible not to feel moved by their words, and I wanted to give everything I had so that their voices could be heard. 

Together with the agency, we developed a very intimate approach, using home movie footage, those bright, innocent moments of childhood, contrasted against the mothers’ heartbreaking stories. That contrast felt essential to show how spaces that should feel safe and joyful for children can slowly be poisoned by the invisible threat of online violence. The shoot was intense and deeply human. The campaign ended up winning a few awards, which is always gratifying, but for me the real reward was being part of a project that truly mattered.

These projects remind me why I do what I do: because beyond the images and the stories, it’s about the encounters, the causes, and the emotions that change me too. And when a project touches people, makes them think, or moves them even a little, I feel like we’ve all won something together.