Martine Gignac first became interested in documentary filmmaking in 2006 while she was part of a congregation of nuns, hoping to document the imminent decline of that way of life. In the end, she didn’t become a nun, but she did emerge as a filmmaker!
A graduate of the Institut de l’image et du son (INIS), where she won the Louise-Spickler Excellence Scholarship in the Feature Film Writing program, she also trained in film editing at the École des métiers du cinéma et de la vidéo (ÉMCV). She directed her first short fiction film, La Vocation , after winning the "Réseau de formation en audiovisuel du Québec" (RFAVQ) competition. Her next feature film, The Praying, is funded by SODEC’s Emerging Filmmakers Program as well as Telefilm Canada’s Talents en vue program.