Marshall Axani is an award winning writer and director who has established himself as a versatile and highly ambitious storyteller with a focus on emotionally engaging narrative films. In winter 2016 he wrote and directed his first produced feature film, The Cannon, a drama about an aging adult film star trying to pull his life together before his adolescent daughter discovers what he really does for a living. It was funded through the Telefilm Microbudget Program and is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.Marshall has secured a reputation as a skilled pitcher, winning some of Canada’s top film grants from which he has been able to create an array of short films. As the recipient of the inaugural MPPIA Short Film Award in 2008, Marshall created the highly praised short film The Light of Family Burnam that went on to win several international Best Picture Awards. In 2012 Marshall won two subsequent grants to create the short films The Vessel and Anxious Oswald Greene, the latter screening in some of the most prestigious international film festivals and setting a record for winning the most Leo Awards of any production in its history. He then was one of three recipients for the Harold Greenberg Fund's Shorts-to-Features program in which he wrote and directed Mina.Minerva, which is being developed into a feature.Marshall has worked in the industry assisting such individuals as Academy Award-winning Director of Photography Russell Carpenter (Titanic, True Lies), as well as in post-production for such shows as Motive (CTV), Missing (ABC) and Apollo 18 (Weinstein Company). In his spare time Marshall enjoys serving as a freelance story editor and director mentor to fellow filmmakers and upcoming talents. Of his many interests outside of film, the main one revolves around being able to deliver on-the-spot cringe inducing puns.