Piece of the action Winnipeg Free Press [Video]

In Sniper: The Last Stand, Sgt. Brandon Beckett’s latest attempt to save humanity is Danishka Esterhazy’s first foray into action flicks.

The Winnipeg-born filmmaker is also the first female director of the long-running Sniper franchise, which launched in 1993 and now counts 11 movies following marine sniper Beckett (and, previously, his dad Tom) on high-stakes missions of global importance.

“I’ve always been a huge action fan and I always wanted to make those films, but I had a really hard time getting traction and getting those opportunities,” Esterhazy says over Zoom from Los Angeles.

Her interest in the high-octane genre was piqued as a kid watching James Bond movies with her dad. But when Esterhazy was getting started in the early 2000s after graduating from the Canadian Film Centre, female action fans were often left out of the equation.

“A lot of producers were saying women don’t watch genre films, women don’t like horror, they …