Isak Vaillancourt

Isak Vaillancourt (he/him) is an award-winning film director, multidisciplinary artist, communications professional, and community organizer of Somali-French ancestry. His creative practice spans filmmaking, photography, multimedia installation, and arts-based programming, exploring identity through Black healing, memory, visual culture, decolonization and liberation.

He is the director and producer of the films amplify (2020), Collective Resistance (2023), and Can You Feel It Now? (2025). His documentary and experimental films have screened at regional, national, and international festivals, and his multimedia installations have been presented in galleries and group exhibitions. Collective Resistance is available to stream on OUTtv and Amazon Prime Video.

Can You Feel It Now? won Outstanding Northern Ontario Short Film at the 2025 Cinéfest Sudbury International Film Festival and earned Isak a nomination for Outstanding Director – Short Format at the 2026 Northern Ontario Music and Film Awards.

Isak is also a contributing author to Free to Be More: Creative Activism in the Era of Black Lives Matter, edited by Syrus Marcus Ware and Ra’anaa Yaminah Ekundayo, with d’bi.young anitafrika.

He holds a Master of Arts in Media Production from Toronto Metropolitan University, where his graduate research focused on Black-Indigenous relations, immersive technologies, visual culture, advanced media production, and social justice.

Alongside his creative practice, Isak specializes in strategic messaging, partner engagement, project management and public advocacy. His professional work supports First Nations advocacy and the priorities of Black communities in rural and northern regions.

Isak is a Co-Founder and Director of Black Lives Matter Sudbury, a non-profit organization established in 2020 to dismantle systemic racism and support cultural creation in Northern Ontario.