Niobe Thompson

Niobe Thompson is a Canadian anthropologist and documentary film maker. The founder of Handful of Films, he produces and hosts one-off and series documentaries in partnership with CBC's science-and-nature program ''The Nature of Things''. He has won three Canadian Screen Awards for "Best Science and Nature Documentary" (''Code Breakers'', 2011; ''The Great Human Odyssey'', 2015; ''Equus - Story of the Horse'', 2019), his films have won 32 Alberta Film Awards, and he is a two-time winner of the Edmonton Film Prize.

Thompson studied Russian at the University of Alberta and McGill University before completing a masters at London's School of Slavonic and East European Studies. For his PhD at University of Cambridge's Scott Polar Research Institute he lived in Russia's remote Chukotka region, following the impact of Roman Abramovich's modernization program in the early 2000s. Four of his documentaries were partly filmed with indigenous people in Chukotka.

Thompson was raised partly in the northern Alberta Cree community of Wabasca-Desmarais, where his father Jamie Thompson made wood-canvas canoes. He speaks Russian, Danish and French. His mother Sharon Poetker Thompson is a landscape painter. Thompson described his ambition in film making, stating "I want my children Iris and Vita to grow up in a scientifically literate society, where films that explore the natural world play a central role"

Thompson credits conservationist David Suzuki and veteran Canadian filmmaker Tom Radford for his introduction to film. He also works with the Canadian ''verité'' specialist Rosvita Dransfeld. Provided by Wikipedia