Truro filmmaker premieres Irish folklore- inspired short internationally at Shanghai film festival

Filmmaker Leah Johnston traveled to China for the Shanghai International Film Festival, where her latest short film Mother’s Skin will have its international premiere.
SHANGHAI, CHINA – Filmmaker Leah Johnston traveled over 10,000 kilometres from her home in Halifax to Shanghai, China.
While she’s certainly having plenty of fun in the coastal city, the purpose of her travel was not to take a vacation – rather, she is currently one of many filmmakers from across the world who have gathered together for the 25th annual Shanghai International Film Festival, where her newest short, Mother’s Skin, had its international premiere on June 11.

“The film’s been circulating in Canada, but it’s sort of a question mark of if it will resonate outside of Canada. Will it find an audience of people who are interested in it?” Johnston said in an interview with SaltWire prior to the film’s showing.With those questions left up in the air for the time being, Johnston has been appreciative of the entire experience. “It’s really rewarding to have it at a big festival, like here in Shanghai.”

Switching paths
Johnston is an award-winning filmmaker from Truro who has had a prolific career in the industry, producing a number of shorts (My Younger Older Sister, Ingrid and the Black Hole) through her production company, Pretty Fierce Films.
Although Johnston has made a name for herself nationally with her work, film wasn’t an art form that she was always so invested in – rather, her original passion was musical theatre.
“I grew up doing plays in Truro, and at Neptune Theatre, Charlottetown Festival,” said Johnston. “At that point, I went and studied musical theatre (in New York) and, basically, upon graduating, I had some health issues with my voice. I wasn’t able to sing.”
It was then that Johnston was forced to transition out of musical theatre.
“It came out of pain by not being able to express myself through singing anymore. It was one of the main outlets for me in terms of my self-expression, and my passion. Not being able to do that anymore left a big hole in my life.”
It was in her attempts to fill that void that Johnston picked up a camera and began photography. “I would set the camera up, turn on my timer and go, doing dance poses and stuff like that.”

After spending years in an industry that required sets, people, props, and a lot of money just to get a project off the ground, Johnston wanted to redirect her passion into an art form that was focused on what she could do as an individual.
This new-found passion led directly into film – inspired in part by the then-new capability of a DSLR camera to shoot video. While films also require the aforementioned sets, people, and money, photography helped Johnston come to a point where she felt comfortable in that environment again.
“I think, through being able to do something completely on my own, it gave me the confidence, and a bit of the technical knowledge, to take on directing films.”
Autobiographical and fictional
For her most recent film, Mother’s Skin, Johnston said she wanted to hone in on her mother and grandmother’s story of abuse while living in rural Newfoundland.
“I was learning about my family history, in particular my grandmother,” said Johnston. “My grandfather was very physically abusive to her, and my mother grew up witnessing a lot of abuse of her mother at the hands of her father, and being helpless in this situation.”
Johnston opted to use the myth of the selkie – the Irish-folklore equivalent of a mermaid – to convey the film’s themes of subjugation and intergenerational trauma.
“They’re half-human, half-seal,” explained Johnston. “They look like seals, and they can take off their skin and (take) a human form.

In the myths, if a selkie has her seal skin stolen while it’s been shed, she’ll be under the control of whoever stole it – often marrying and having children.
“When I found that myth, it seemed like the perfect mold of which to tell this story, and some of the ideas and subjects I was thinking about.”
Johnston describes her film as an “autobiography mixed with fiction” – a phrase that she’d use to describe most of her filmography.
“A lot of my films are like that. They’re bringing forward themes or ideas from my own life, often with genre elements, magical realism, metaphors.”
Shot using analog technology in Sambro, Nova Scotia, Mother’s Skin was first shown at the Vancouver International Film Festival and the Festival du Nouveau Cinema in Montreal in 2022. Johnston spoke of the audience’s reception to those premieres.
“It’s been really positive,” said Johnston. “It’s the kind of film that if you don’t know the myth it’s based on, it still makes sense. It still resonants, I think. I didn’t want to spell it out for the audience, so it’s really good that people who don’t know the myth seem to still understand the film on an emotional level.”
Now in Shanghai, Johnston is eager to see not only the reactions to her film but also everything else that the city has to offer her while she’s there from June 10 to 18.
“I’m fascinated to learn more about the culture, experience the festival and the films. It’s going to be really interesting, I’m sure.”
To learn more about Johnston and her work, visit or website at leahjohnston.com.