New documentary examines Emma Fillipoff disappearance: How and where to watch
A new docuseries, ‘Barefoot in the Night’, delves into the so far 13-year search for the missing Canadian woman Emma Fillipoff.
A newly-released documentary looks into the more than decade-long search for Emma Fillipoff, a woman whose unsolved disappearance in British Columbia is one of Canada’s highest-profile missing-persons cases.
Created by the filmmaker Kimberley Bordage, the docuseries Barefoot in the Night: The Search for Emma Fillipoff premiered on January 6, to coincide with Fillipoff’s 40th birthday. You can watch episode one on Vimeo.
When and where did Emma Fillipoff go missing?
Fillipoff, then 26, vanished on November 28, 2012. She was last seen outside the Empress Hotel in downtown Victoria, B.C., where police offers conducted a welfare check on her at around 7:00 p.m. that evening.
Police had been called by an acquaintance of Fillipoff, who had found her “standing barefoot on a corner looking disoriented, paranoid and seemingly unable to cross the street”, per the Help Find Emma Fillipoff website.
In a statement, Victoria Police Department (VicPD) said Fillipoff “was found to be safe at that time”. However, VicPD also noted: “At the time of her disappearance, Emma appeared to be suffering from the onset of some mental health issues.”
In the 13 years that have followed, there have been few notable leads. One came in May 2014, in Vancouver, B.C.: a man caught by security cameras at a Gastown clothing store claimed Fillipoff was his girlfriend and had intentionally disappeared.
However, the individual has not been identified - he is known only as “the Man in the Green Shirt” - and there have been no confirmed sightings of Fillipoff since she went missing.
“Now it’s considered a cold case”
Fillipoff’s case has now passed into the hands of VicPD’s Historical Case Review Unit - a development that the Perth, Ontario native’s mother, Shelley, has described as akin to a “kick in the stomach”.
In an interview with Bordage in November, ahead of the 13th anniversary of Fillipoff’s disappearance, Shelley said: “What that means is now it’s considered a cold case. Which didn’t make me feel very good.
“That, again, is like another milestone. It’s like another kick in the stomach […]. It felt kind of like they’ve closed the book on it”.
“It’s surreal”
In her conversation with Bordage, Shelley added that she finds it “just unfathomable” that her daughter has now been missing for 13 years.
“I think back to that day when I went to Victoria [in the hours after Fillipoff was last seen],” Shelley said. “I think about those months that I spent in Victoria looking, and I still to this day can’t believe that I couldn’t just find her.”
She concluded: “It’s surreal to me; it’s surreal, what’s happening.”
When will there be more Barefoot in the Night episodes?
While only episode one of Barefoot in the Night is available for now, the remainder of the six-part series is “coming soon”, says Bordage’s production company, Bayberry Films. At the time of writing, no release dates appeared to have been announced.
In 2014, Fillipoff’s disappearance was also covered in-depth by CBC News, in the Fifth Estate documentary Finding Emma Fillipoff. What’s more, the case has been the subject of numerous podcasts, such as Nighttime, hosted by the investigative journalist Jordon Bonaparte.
If you have any information about Emma Fillipoff’s whereabouts, you can get in touch with Victoria Police Department at 250-995-7654 or info@vicpd.ca, quoting case reference 2012-47309.
You can also contact Crime Stoppers by calling 1-800-222-TIPS(8477), or visiting canadiancrimestoppers.org/submit-a-tip/submit-a-tip. Alternatively, you can email Canada’s National Centre for Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains at canadasmissing-disparuscanada@rcmp-grc.gc.ca.
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