Cochrane’s own Fraser Costen can now add award-winning filmmaker to the resume after winning a ROSIE at the Alberta Film & Television Awards.

Costen’s documentary “Life’s A Drag” was nominated for the Fil Fraser Best Student Production category.

“The documentary follows two drag artists” explains Costen. “One is a drag queen and one is a drag king. They talk to us about their life, what it's like to be a drag performer, and their journey from starting to how it's changed their lives and their outlook and how it's been different at the end of it.”

“There's this really nice journey that we take the audience on throughout the film, where we showed them a physical transformation of the artists getting into drag themselves and to be seen out of drag.”

The 17-minute documentary was produced while Costen attended the film program at SAIT in Calgary. 

“My teacher thought he would put our piece in [for the award] because it was a really good project.”

“I actually found out I was nominated because my friends messaged it was on Facebook. I don't use Facebook very often. I went on the website and I double-checked and I was like, Oh my gosh.”

Costen was up against three other student productions that were nominated but had high hopes to come home with a win.

“There's always that level of uncertainty when we're going up against two dramatic short films and then another documentary, so it was kind of hard to gauge.”

“I was extremely optimistic, thinking I was gonna win! My family and I were thinking hey, this is a really good documentary.”

Turns out the optimism went a long way as Costen took home the win during the morning ceremony.

Since graduating from the SAIT program, Costen has worked on various sets including HBO’s production of "The Last Of Us".

Check out the award-winning “Life’s A Drag” documentary in the video below starting at the 59-minute mark.