Perhaps drama production is currently on the wane. But that does produce one positive side effect - it means that you have to be a pretty special talent to remain in the game. This year's 10 to Watch ably proves that. Playback staff have pored over the rosters of local talent agencies and have chimed in with their own regional expertise to draw up a list of 10 men and women from across the country - helmers, performers and scribes - each on the verge of making noise in his or her respective craft. With talent like this, the future of film and TV drama appears to be in good hands.

DIRECTORS

Nisha Ganatra
Age: 30
Residence: New York/Toronto
Agency: Great North Artists Management
Buzz: directing Cake, starring Heather Graham

While growing up in Vancouver, Nisha Ganatra got her first taste of the biz as an actor, but soon realized she wanted to be behind the camera.

"I was so interested in film, because I thought it was a way to effect cultural change, but there was no way to do that as an actor," she says.

Ganatra took her first steps studying at UCLA, although not pursuing a film degree. But while enrolled in pre-law (at her parents' request), she snuck into screenwriting classes and was inspired to make her first short, Generation seX.

At 21, she headed east to attend film school at New York University. Her short Junky Punky Girlz (1996) won NYU's Tisch Fellowship and most outstanding short film from PBS, leading Ganatra to leave before graduating to direct the comedy Chutney Popcorn (1999), in which East Indian and North American values clash within a family. The film, which she cowrote, went on to win best feature at the L.A. and San Francisco film festivals, and audience awards at Berlin and Newport.

Despite her quick success, Ganatra says her mom was worried she would never get a job because she hadn't completed her degree, so she returned to pick up her remaining credits.

In the wake of Chutney Popcorn, Ganatra directed a season of MTV series The Real World in New York. Then in 2002, she came to Toronto to direct Fast Food High, a CTV MOW.

Last year she directed MOW Cosmopolitan in New York and is currently working on Cake, a Canadian feature starring Heather Graham and Taye Diggs, about a young woman who, after exploring the world as a travel writer, returns home to Toronto to take charge of her father's conservative wedding magazine.

Cake, written by former 10 to Watch pick Tassie Cameron for Northwood Productions and Lions Gate Films, is currently shooting in Toronto and will wrap mid-July. Laura Bracken

Paul Fox
Age: 41
Residence: Toronto
Agency: The Characters
Buzz: CFC feature Head Games currently in post

After Paul Fox's mother took him to see King Kong at the Roxy, he knew what he wanted to do, and now he has locked picture on Head Games, his first feature film.

Fox attended New York's School of Visual Arts, and his student film, Last Round Up, not only won him the best fiction film award at the Mexico City Film Festival, but also an invitation to Sundance, where he secured a first-look deal with New Line Cinema. Fox returned to Toronto shortly thereafter, where he became an editor for music video shop Revolver Film Company and attended the Canadian Film Centre.

This led Fox to directing episodic TV, including Cold Squad and The Associates, and the short film Reunion. Although he never intended to do another short, Fox is glad he did, as it took him around the world to festivals and initiated his working relationship with Brent Barclay (coproducer on Marion Bridge), who would go on to produce Head Games.

The film, made through the CFC's Feature Film Project from a script by Wil Zmak, is a psychological thriller about a psychiatrist who takes her family to a winter cottage only to have them held hostage by one of her former patients. The film is in post-production.

"It's great to have a movie," says Fox. "It's what I feel I've been moving toward for a long time. It's exciting and gratifying."

Fox is also set to direct The Mysteries of Ice Fishing, from his own script, and is attached to direct Nocturnia, written by Derek Schreyer (another Cold Squad alum), as well as Douglas Coupland's original screenplay Everything's Gone Green, through Toronto's Radke Films.

"Everything's Gone Green is a comedy, which is what interested me about it," says Fox. "I want to have a career where you can do a thriller one year, a comedy another year and a western another. Westerns are what I'd most like to make." Dustin Dinoff

Ziad Touma
Age: 30
Residence: Montreal
Buzz: first feature Saved by the Belles snagged three Genie nominations

Born in Beirut and residing in Montreal, Ziad Touma says he's often called a Renaissance man, because of his tendency to take on many roles in addition to directing, which often include producing and writing.

Touma graduated from Concordia University's communications program in 1994. His student film Dinner at Bubby's won best Canadian student film at the Montreal International Short Film Festival in 1995.

Through his company Couzin Films, Touma wrote and directed Saved by the Belles, distributed by Cinema Libre. Set against the backdrop of Montreal nightlife, the film tells the story of two clubbers who rescue a boy found unconscious in the street.