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Exclusive: Justin Ducharme has begun production on debut feature Seventeen, revolving around the lives of three Indigenous sex workers in Vancouver.

The production has also unveiled its buzzy Indigenous cast featuring Nizhonniya Austin (The Curse), Taio Gelinas, Kaniehtiio Horn, Shannon Baker (Bones of Crows) and newcomer, singer, model, and human rights advocate Aalayna.

Set over the course of seventeen hours, the film follows three Indigenous sex workers whose lives intersect through chance, relation and the shared experience of familial and colonial displacement.

Writer, filmmaker and curator Ducharme, who hails from the Métis community of St. Ambroise on Treaty 1 Territory, has tapped into his own experiences for the screenplay.

“I’m very excited to be off the ground and working on Seventeen with such an amazing cast and crew. This project has been long in development with the support and inclusion...

Platforms roll out new ad formats pretty consistently, and in most cases, they’re nothing groundbreaking. Pre-rolls, mid-rolls, in-feed ads, takeovers, pause ads…We’ve seen it all before. So when Snap announced it was launching a new ad product, we expected nothing special.

Instead, we found something unique: Snapchat is now allowing brands to sponsor Snap Schools, its series of Irl creator education/biz dev events.

Snap launched the workshop program in 2022, and to date has hosted over 50 installments in the U.S., Mexico, Europe, Mena, and India. Topics include the nuts and bolts of content creation, engagement strategies and audience-building, and monetization. Before this year, the workshops were put on solely by Snap. But this past February, it partnered with cosmetics brand Clinique as Snap Schools’ first sponsor.

“In February, over 75 creators participated in a Clinique-branded game show where they learned about Clinique’s dermatologist-guided approach to skincare,...

Issa Rae got her start as an “awkward Black girl” on YouTube, and now that she’s a mainstream celebrity known for creating, writing, and starring in HBO‘s Insecure, she’s funneling her success back into the creator industry. Her creator-centric company Ensemble has partnered with Snapchat‘s accelerator 523 to provide its fourth-year class of 15 creators with mentorship and a direct line to brand deals with Ensemble’s partners, which include Pepsi, Chili’s, and Popeyes.

523 launched in 2021, and to date has incubated 58 creators and content companies. Among its graduates are folks like Mia Finney, who used funds from the program to upgrade her production quality and now has 6.5 million followers on TikTok, and companies like Swish Cultures, which grabbed the NBA‘s attention while in 523 and ended up partnering with the league for a Snapchat show, NBA Presents Swish Cultures Weekly.

So far, two years of 523 focused on content companies,...