Songs for murdered sisters

Directed by: Kyle Megill & John Kealey

Production company: no hands

Executive Producer: The National Arts Centre

Status: Submission to 2026 Film Festivals

Featuring: Joshua Hopkins, Margaret Atwood, Jake Heggie, Alexander Shelley

On September 22, 2015, a single day of violence in Renfrew County, Ontario, shattered countless lives when three women - Carol Culleton, Anastasia Kuzyk, and Nathalie Warmerdam, sister of baritone Joshua Hopkins, were murdered by one man. The tragedy became one of Canada’s darkest moments of gender-based violence.

Determined to transform grief into action, Hopkins joined forces with composer Jake Heggie and author Margaret Atwood to create Songs for Murdered Sisters, a song cycle that gives voice to loss and to the thousands of women silenced by femicide. After its album release and Juno nomination, the work reaches its most powerful form yet: an orchestral world premiere with the National Arts Centre Orchestra.

This documentary follows the urgent, emotional countdown to that performance. It is both an intimate portrait of a brother fighting to reclaim meaning and a collective call to confront the epidemic of gender-based violence that continues to take lives around the world.

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