Larisa Gutmanis

Head of International Film Financing Forum

Larisa Gutmanis has over 25 years of experience in the film and television industry in the areas of production, distribution, acquisitions, marketing, and screenwriting. A graduate of the feature film screenwriting program at Norman Jewison’s Canadian Film Centre, she has taught screenwriting at the University of Toronto, the Latvian Academy of Culture in Riga, and media classes at Toronto’s Ryerson University. She has worked as a marketing executive at Home Box Office (HBO) in New York, and is presently the head of the International Financing Forum, the official co-production / co-financing market for feature films during the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). She has also served on several film juries and works as a story editor for Canadian and European production companies.

She is currently in development on a television series and two feature film projects, and has received development funding from Creative Europe MEDIA for her Canada/Latvia-set script to be shot in 2023.