His movies include Impressions of China (1973), Creative Process: Norman McLaren (1990) and The Passerby (1995), for which he was awarded Best Cultural Documentary at the 1997 Hot Docs festival. In 1999, McWilliams was nominated for an Oscar® as producer and editor of Sunrise over Tiananmen Square. In 2009, he directed, edited and narrated A Time There Was: Stories from the Last Days of Kenya Colony, an autobiographical documentary that revisits the Mau Mau Rebellion of the 1950s and McWilliams’ own participation in the conflict as a young British soldier.