Niobe Thompson

Niobe Thompson is a Canadian anthropologist and documentary film maker.^[1] 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.^[2] 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.^[1] 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.^[3] 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"^[4]

Thompson credits conservationist David Suzuki and veteran Canadian filmmaker Tom Radford for his introduction to film.^[5] He also works with the Canadian verité specialist Rosvita Dransfeld.^[6]