The YVR Screen Scene Podcast

Filmmaker Joella Cabalu returns to the YVR Screen Scene Podcast to discuss her highly anticipated “rom-com documentary” First Comes Loves: Nakabingwit. This National Film Board of Canada production has its world premiere at the 2026 Vancouver International Film Festival. The film follows three Filipina–white couples whose whirlwind love stories unfold alongside hard conversations about race, belonging, and what it takes to stay together. The Tagalog word “nakabingwit” refers to catching a big fish but colloquially, it means you caught a rich white husband. When talking to other Filipino Canadians, our valiant filmmaker discovered this word carries complex feelings of both pride and shame. Framing these stories is Joella’s own meta-narrative. Through a playful voice-over and fictionalized scenes, she revisits racially charged moments from her romantic life, which are evocatively depicted by actors Gabrielle Jacinto and David Lennon in the style of popular romantic films like When Harry Met Sally and Before Sunrise.
In this fun and fascinating episode, Joella speaks with Sabrina (a biracial women who is in a interracial marriage with a biracial man) about the joys and challenges of interracial relationships, the intergenerational healing that comes from having tough conversations, why she hired an actress to play her in this film, and what’s a rom-com documentary, anyway?
YVR Screen Scene is a division of Fish Flight Entertainment.

Few forests on Earth are as creepy as those located in the Pacific Northwest, for a slew of reasons: they cover a lot of territory, they’re ancient, and their unwieldiness inspires discomfort, uncertainty, and acts of evil (just consider the disproportionately high number of serial killers whose stories intersect with our West Coast forests).
Sawtooth Mountain builds on the inherent creepiness of the Pacific Northwest. Written and directed by Matthew Kincses, the locally shot horror feature transports its audiences to a remote cabin in a dense PNW forest, where two paranormal-obsessed brothers, desperate to boost business for their Bigfoot-themed rental cabin, stage a sighting during a guided tour. But when a group of college students arrive for a weekend getaway, the prank takes a dark and dangerous turn, one the brothers never planned for.
Sawtooth Mountain is thrilling. It’s scary. It honours the legend of Bigfoot while also skewering the cash grabs that have sprung up around it. And: it’s the perfect film for spooky season. In this fun episode, Sabrina speaks with Sawtooth Mountain’s married producer+actor team Nhi Do and Gabriel Carter about Bigfoot, adventures in indie filmmaking, the anatomy of fear, and why forests are so damn scary (but not as scary as people).
YVR Screen Scene is a division of Fish Flight Entertainment.

The iconic actress-director Amanda Tapping (Stargate SG-1, Sanctuary) returns to the pod for a freewheeling 95-minute conversation about – well, anything and everything: the magic of Murder in a Small Town (for which she won a Leo Award earlier this year); the story behind the viral Stargate SG-1 blooper (“I may have just lost my job”); how she holds onto her humanity in a difficult industry; the motivation behind her upcoming mental health book; her thoughts on the long-promised Stargate reboot; and why she doesn’t think of herself as an actor anymore.
YVR Screen Scene is a division of Fish Flight Entertainment.

Filmmaker Karen Lam is a bundle of delicious incongruities in human form. On one hand, Karen is a master of highly stylised horror. Films like The Curse of Willow Song, Evangeline, and Mrs. Chang’s Perfect Teeth are terrifying and thoughtful, gruesome and evocative – and you wouldn’t be faulted for thinking that the writer-director behind these films is a spooky word-slinger. But on the other hand, Karen is whimsical. She loves knitting and sewing, cats and Muppets, and does Manitoba proud with everything she does. She’s the least Karen Karen you’ll ever meet – and her latest film Armageddon Road might be the most unapologetically Karen Lam film she’s ever made.
Armageddon Road is a darkly comic supernatural road trip set in 1976 Las Vegas where ambition, myth, and apocalypse collide. Steve, an ex-con with big dreams of building a theme-park empire from a desert parking lot, takes a simple job: driving Delilah, a mob boss’s girlfriend, through the Vegas night. But after a party spirals into chaos, Delilah dies—only to return possessed by one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. What follows is a delirious descent into prophecy and paranoia as Delilah—now something far older and far less human—commands Steve toward a predetermined rendezvous that will trigger the end of days.
In other words: Armageddon Road is a helluva lot of psychedelic fun, which is appropriate, because so is Karen.
Armageddon Road had its official Canadian premiere on August 5, and begins its cross-country tour in Toronto on September 3 – and it’s got some other screenings in other countries, too. Karen Lam joins Sabrina in the YVR Screen Scene Podcast studio to talk 1970s nostalgia, why Gen X reigns as the survivor generation, the giddy glee she experienced working with miniatures, and what she and her team found in Nevada when they went in search of that distinctive neon-drenched Vegas vibe.
YVR Screen Scene is a division of Fish Flight Entertainment.

Daniel Bacon has amassed a long list of credits: more than 150 credits in film and television and more than 20 in the theatre. He played Bonecruncher, one of the man-eating giants, in The BFG – which was directed by an up-and-coming indie director – maybe you’ve heard of him – Steven Spielberg. He appeared in The Smashing Machine and Secrets of a Marine’s Life. He’s guest starred on shows like The Irrational, Motherland Fort Salem, Limetown, and The Good Doctor. He played in all three seasons of Paranormal Solutions Inc., including an episode where his character – an injured member of the PSI team – is injured and nursed back to health by Sasquatch, played with the gentle touch of a Wookiee on Life Day by Dave Collette. He’s appeared in dozens of Hallmark Movies, and was mayor in at least eight of them. And all this, after getting his start in a boy band and touring malls across Canada (like contemporaries Tiffany, Debbie Gibson, and Robin Sparkles).
All that is to say that Daniel has a lot of experience in the entertainment biz, and a lot of knowledge to share. On Wednesday, August 12, he’ll teach his very popular online workshop called “Own Your Audition” for The Drama Class, which you might remember is run by friends of the pod Cat Lough Haggquist and Bronwen Smith. Daniel’s class helps actors develop a process and a confidence in how to make choices that help your audition stand out – which, in this new era of self tapes, is especially important.
In this fascinating and contemplative episode, Daniel talks about his boy band era, his time with Sasquatch, and how actors can make an impact with their self-tapes, and also shares his still-unfolding adoption story (which should be a movie all on its own).
YVR Screen Scene is a division of Fish Flight Entertainment.