Phillip Borsos

Who was Phillip Borsos?

Phillip Borsos was a Canadian film director and film producer.

Borsos showed an early interest in film-making while attending high school in Maple Ridge, B.C. He studied film at the Banff Centre School for Fine Arts and at the Vancouver School of Art, now the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design.

His early work included several shorts notable for their cinematography and pacing. Three outstanding documentaries done in his early years are Cooperage, Spartree and Nails. All three won Best Theatrical Short at the Canadian Film Awards, "The Genie Awards", and also received a nomination for an Oscar in the Documentary Short category. He began working on feature-length films and his first, The Grey Fox, earned him a "Best Director" and "Best Film" at the Genies in 1983. It told the story of Bill Miner, Canada's first train robber and starred Richard Farnsworth.

He followed that success with The Mean Season and One Magic Christmas. Production problems dogged his biopic Bethune: The Making of a Hero which starred Donald Sutherland as Dr. Norman Bethune. His final film Far From Home: The Adventures of Yellow Dog was produced in 1994. During the same time he was diagnosed with leukemia.