A unique and thrilling investigation with multiple twists and turns, Corradino Durruti’s film serves as a chilling study of the morals and mores of both the Italian police and of the notorious ‘Ndrangheta, a powerful criminal network with tentacles reaching deep into the corporate and political worlds.
A Bright Light: Karen and the Process follows three women on an oneiric road trip as they trace folk musician Karen Dalton's movements across the American landscape back to Woodstock.
Director Nettie Wild and her Canadian/Mexican crew capture eight months in the life of the Zapatista National Liberation Army revolution in the southern state of Chiapas, Mexico.
A post-Fordist drama that provides a gripping and often humorous insider-look at cultural differences between workers, with a sharp-eyed examination of shifting power in the global economy, American Factory follows the revival of an industrial plant in Dayton, Ohio after Fuyao, a Chinese automotive glass company, takes over.
A conservative Indo-Canadian family in small-town British Columbia must come to terms with a devastating secret: three sisters were sexually abused by an older relative beginning in their childhood years.
In 1987, the sudden death of the head of Italy’s largest publishing house triggered a battle of succession between two of the country’s most aggressive businessmen: Silvio Berlusconi and Carlo De Benedetti. Four years later, Berlusconi is charged with corruption.
In Buddy, veteran Dutch director Heddy Honigmann crafts a heartwarming exploration of the dog-human bond, celebrating the extraordinary skills of service dogs and how they support the physical and emotional health of their companions.
Call Me Intern calls attention to unpaid labour and new generation of activists who are organizing against, and even suing, some of their former employers.
Candice Vadala aka Candida Royalle is known to many as the “godmother of feminist porn.” Director Sheona McDonald goes beyond the headlines to craft a layered portrait of the woman behind the icon, capturing Vadala in her sixties when, confronted with an ovarian cancer diagnosis.
A remote Sicilian reception centre for unaccompanied migrant minors is about to close, and six teenagers are left awaiting the decision that will seal their fate.
City Dreamers offers a glimpse into the careers of four trailblazing urban architects of the 20th century: Phyllis Lambert, Blanche Lemco van Ginkel, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, and Denise Scott Brown. Each of the four boasts an impressive and decades-long career in shaping urban spaces.
Existential water cooler talk and gallows humour is standard for cemetery workers as they prepare bodies and remove old caskets from tombs, while playfully discussing the afterlife, armageddon, and the benefits of cremation. Director Miguel Eek asks us to abandon sentimentality in order to ponder the more functional aspects of death.
Corleone delivers a Shakespearean storyline about the rise and fall of Teodoro Totò Riina, the real-life godfather who was born into the same village as Vito Corleone played by Marlon Brando in Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece, The Godfather.
There is a crisis in Mexico. While headlines that sensationalize drug cartels and glorify bosses like El Chapo hint at the problem, Julien Elie’s epic Dark Suns reveals the terrifying extent of the violence and its consequences.
Part of Longing and Belonging: 1990s South Asian Film and Video, this series of shorts includes The Wild Woman in the Woods, Bolo! Bolo!, and Coconut/Cane & Cutlass.
Anna Rún Tryggvadóttir, Elín Hansdóttir, Hanna Björk Valsdóttir
Iceland
2019
73 minutes
Wednesday, May 8, 2019 - 4:15pm
Sunday, May 12, 2019 - 12:00pm
For the past 25 years, Snorri Magnusson has operated an infant swim class pushing the boundaries of what we believe tiny humans are capable of. More than just a swim class, Snorri offers a sense of connection and community for new families navigating the beginnings of parenthood.
An unflinching look at the #FeesMustFall student movement that stormed onto the South African political landscape in 2015 as a protest over the cost of education.
A meditative journey along two rivers — the Ganges in India, and the Biobío in Chile — that serves as a junction between two similar but distinct ways of life.
The Molenbeek district of Brussels is oft-seen as contentious and brimming with unrest when spoken about in the media, but director Reetta Huhtanen deliberately captures the neighbourhood through a more innocent set of eyes. Meet Aatos and Amine, 6-year-old best friends living in the same building block who share an exuberant imagination.
Features disarmingly honest musings from Lightfoot himself, as well as astonishing archival footage which captures him during his earliest days of performing, Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind provides an illuminating and emotional glimpse into the personality and behind-the-scenes life of a Canadian legend.
In his debut feature, director Ian Soroka creates an evocative portrait of the southern Slovenian landscape that facilitated what is considered to be Europe’s most effective resistance movement during World War II.
Indigenous, Black and People of Colour communities are disproportionately underrepresented in all media. How do past images unearthed from personal and institutional archives come to shape new stories?
Documentarian Naomi Mark returns home to the Yukon to learn the craft of beekeeping from her father, Don Mark. Seasons change along with Don’s health, making the relationship between father, daughter, and bees grow all the more important.
With the rise of populism, extremism, racism, and indifference, democracy is in crisis and nobody seems able to find a cure. Director Claudia Tosi explores how this crisis unfolds in Italy through the battles of two remarkable women, Manuela Ghizzoni and Daniela DePietri, both members of the country’s Democratic Party.
Resilience in the face of disaster is at the heart of Shannon Walsh’s expansive study. Shot across five different countries, Walsh introduces us to five courageous women, each encountering their own form of crisis.
Filmmaker Jewel Maranan follows the plight of four families living in the impoverished Manilan district of Tondo as the government forces their resettlement, casting a critical look at the everyday violence that precedes the construction of a globalized city.
Instructions on Parting is an intimate portrait of the filmmaker’s own life and of those dearest to her as they deal with marriage, childbirth, and three cancer diagnoses in her immediate family.
Over a five-year collection of visits to her childhood home in the West Texas town of Lubbock, Nadia Shihab explores questions of identity in diaspora through the life and work of her visual artist mother.
Daily life at the Los Reyes skate park in Santiago, Chile, is unremarkable, but as this wonderfully original film unfolds, we become aware that human affairs — of street cleaners, small-time drug dealers, and skateboarders — are incidental to the real story here. The stars of this film are its two canine subjects — Football and Chola.
Directed by her youngest son Hepi Mita, Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen is a tender posthumous tribute to his mother’s life and career. A notorious agitator, her films bear witness to the injustice Māori people face in New Zealand, providing a voice for Māori people and especially for Māori women.
Arresting and unique, Midnight Traveler is at once an intimate study of displacement as well as a compelling road movie. The journey of the Afghani Fazili family begins in Tajikistan, where a long wait has resulted in the rejection of their asylum claim.
Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool tracks the artist’s history from his affluent upbringing as the son of a prominent Illinois dentist, through his training at Julliard in New York, and on to the truly remarkable records and performances which defined his apex years of creativity from the mid 1950s to the late 1970s. Fans of Davis will revel in watching never-before-seen footage and learning more about the complex man behind his canonical body of music.
What does it mean to be the person responsible for a parent’s care? Nelleke Koop follows three women who care for their aging mothers with dementia while balancing jobs and other family obligations.
Martina is a visual artist living in Italy. Mahmoud is a nuclear engineering student living in Libya. An unlikely friendship develops between the two when Martina becomes interested in documenting her grandparents’ history in Tripoli, where they lived before fleeing the country as a result of Muammar Gaddafi’s 1970 coup d’état.
Few events in recent Canadian history have sparked as much media attention and outrage as the death of Colten Boushie, a young Cree man who was murdered on a farm in rural Saskatchewan in 2016. Tasha Hubbard’s essential film follows his family’s fight for justice while casting an unflinching look at systemic racism in Canada.
Weaving her personal experience with archival propaganda and testimonies, Nanfu Wang reveals the human rights violations and trauma caused by the Chinese government’s one-child policy.
A live documentary performance that combines the collective sharing of one’s personal life — now habitual on social media — with the 20th century tradition of a family slideshow to unearth the poetry found within the everyday.
Propaganda has been harnessed as a powerful weapon to shape worldviews through compelling images and narratives. In an era of fake news and alternative facts, director Larry Weinstein asks the question: How do we know what we know?
Through interviews with common folk and politicians alike, Push shows the strain that cities across the globe have felt as housing has become a commodity for the wealthy, rather than a necessity for the many.
Freddy is 30 years old and yearns to start a family. For him, this ordinary desire comes with unique challenges. He is a gay transgender man, and the decision to carry his own baby required years of soul searching.
Shooting Indians begins with Ali Kazimi, a newly arrived student in Canada, unraveling the hidden history of the land he has chosen as his new home after taking interest in the career of his friend and colleague, Iroquois photographer Jeffrey Thomas.
In both amateur and professional sports, being gay remains taboo. Standing on the Line looks at the experiences of LGBTQ+ athletes in Canada who set out to overcome prejudice.
Randomly selected by a computer, 60 apprehensive common citizens take their places in the courtroom of the Milan Assize Court of Appeal, which tries Italy’s most notorious criminals.
It’s August in New York City and the otherwise warm and inviting cityscape is permeated by an undercurrent of unease. Climate change, unemployment, race and class tensions, and loss of community — Brett Story’s simple questions of the New Yorkers she encounters around the different boroughs reveal that these issues are on everyone’s lips, and the languid summer moments feel like the quiet before a great storm.
Giovanni Donfrancesco’s extensive portrait of Piero Bonamico gives flesh to one of the darkest hours of Italian history. This perpetrator’s narrative of rising tension, violence and remorse is a journey down the winding road of memory that speaks eerily to the present day.
Expert documentarian Mosco Levi Boucault studies the logic of the 1978 Moro affair from within the Red Brigades organization, through in-depth testimonies by four members of the command who organized Moro’s kidnapping to demand the release of 13 imprisoned revolutionary fighters.
Every summer, thousands of fingernail-sized Western toads cover a rural road in the community of Ryder Lake in Chilliwack, British Columbia. When the toadlets migrate from their breeding ground in the wetlands into the forest, many never make it to the other side of the road.
Meet Mymy, a young medical student who measures her body’s chemical burden from over 27 different cosmetic products. With exclusive access to scientists, lawyers, and whistle-blowers, Toxic Beauty critically examines the global cosmetic industry.
To the majority of people alive and breathing in the year 2000, Who Let The Dogs Out? is the name of a massively popular radio hit by the flash-in-the-pan group Baha Men. To artist Ben Sisto, it is a philosophical question that challenges accepted notions of authorship and creative ownership.
When the small remote town of Maniitsoq, Greenland, is chosen as the site for American aluminum company ALCOA’s new smelting plant, the locals wait with bated breath for construction to begin.
Xalko is a Kurdish village in Turkey — a small, isolated collection of modest houses, ramshackle livestock pens, and scrubby landscape. Director Sami Mermer returns to his hometown to craft an intimate portrait of the women in his family and a place threatened by exodus.
At a high school in Ivry, on the outskirts of Paris, Claire Simon films pairs or groups of kids finding quiet spaces like the school roof, a schoolyard bench, or an empty hallway to talk about their families, fears, relationships, and dreams.
At a high school in Ivry, on the outskirts of Paris, Claire Simon films pairs or groups of kids finding quiet spaces like the school roof, a schoolyard bench, or an empty hallway to talk about their families, fears, relationships, and dreams.
With the rise of populism, extremism, racism, and indifference, democracy is in crisis and nobody seems able to find a cure. Director Claudia Tosi explores how this crisis unfolds in Italy through the battles of two remarkable women, Manuela Ghizzoni and Daniela DePietri, both members of the country’s Democratic Party.
A meditative journey along two rivers — the Ganges in India, and the Biobío in Chile — that serves as a junction between two similar but distinct ways of life.
A conservative Indo-Canadian family in small-town British Columbia must come to terms with a devastating secret: three sisters were sexually abused by an older relative beginning in their childhood years.
A Bright Light: Karen and the Process follows three women on an oneiric road trip as they trace folk musician Karen Dalton's movements across the American landscape back to Woodstock.
In 1987, the sudden death of the head of Italy’s largest publishing house triggered a battle of succession between two of the country’s most aggressive businessmen: Silvio Berlusconi and Carlo De Benedetti. Four years later, Berlusconi is charged with corruption.
Through interviews with common folk and politicians alike, Push shows the strain that cities across the globe have felt as housing has become a commodity for the wealthy, rather than a necessity for the many.
Existential water cooler talk and gallows humour is standard for cemetery workers as they prepare bodies and remove old caskets from tombs, while playfully discussing the afterlife, armageddon, and the benefits of cremation. Director Miguel Eek asks us to abandon sentimentality in order to ponder the more functional aspects of death.
Director Nettie Wild and her Canadian/Mexican crew capture eight months in the life of the Zapatista National Liberation Army revolution in the southern state of Chiapas, Mexico.
Randomly selected by a computer, 60 apprehensive common citizens take their places in the courtroom of the Milan Assize Court of Appeal, which tries Italy’s most notorious criminals.
Expert documentarian Mosco Levi Boucault studies the logic of the 1978 Moro affair from within the Red Brigades organization, through in-depth testimonies by four members of the command who organized Moro’s kidnapping to demand the release of 13 imprisoned revolutionary fighters.
Candice Vadala aka Candida Royalle is known to many as the “godmother of feminist porn.” Director Sheona McDonald goes beyond the headlines to craft a layered portrait of the woman behind the icon, capturing Vadala in her sixties when, confronted with an ovarian cancer diagnosis.
A live documentary performance that combines the collective sharing of one’s personal life — now habitual on social media — with the 20th century tradition of a family slideshow to unearth the poetry found within the everyday.
Features disarmingly honest musings from Lightfoot himself, as well as astonishing archival footage which captures him during his earliest days of performing, Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind provides an illuminating and emotional glimpse into the personality and behind-the-scenes life of a Canadian legend.
It’s August in New York City and the otherwise warm and inviting cityscape is permeated by an undercurrent of unease. Climate change, unemployment, race and class tensions, and loss of community — Brett Story’s simple questions of the New Yorkers she encounters around the different boroughs reveal that these issues are on everyone’s lips, and the languid summer moments feel like the quiet before a great storm.
When the small remote town of Maniitsoq, Greenland, is chosen as the site for American aluminum company ALCOA’s new smelting plant, the locals wait with bated breath for construction to begin.
In Buddy, veteran Dutch director Heddy Honigmann crafts a heartwarming exploration of the dog-human bond, celebrating the extraordinary skills of service dogs and how they support the physical and emotional health of their companions.
The Molenbeek district of Brussels is oft-seen as contentious and brimming with unrest when spoken about in the media, but director Reetta Huhtanen deliberately captures the neighbourhood through a more innocent set of eyes. Meet Aatos and Amine, 6-year-old best friends living in the same building block who share an exuberant imagination.
A remote Sicilian reception centre for unaccompanied migrant minors is about to close, and six teenagers are left awaiting the decision that will seal their fate.
City Dreamers offers a glimpse into the careers of four trailblazing urban architects of the 20th century: Phyllis Lambert, Blanche Lemco van Ginkel, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, and Denise Scott Brown. Each of the four boasts an impressive and decades-long career in shaping urban spaces.
Freddy is 30 years old and yearns to start a family. For him, this ordinary desire comes with unique challenges. He is a gay transgender man, and the decision to carry his own baby required years of soul searching.
There is a crisis in Mexico. While headlines that sensationalize drug cartels and glorify bosses like El Chapo hint at the problem, Julien Elie’s epic Dark Suns reveals the terrifying extent of the violence and its consequences.
Corleone delivers a Shakespearean storyline about the rise and fall of Teodoro Totò Riina, the real-life godfather who was born into the same village as Vito Corleone played by Marlon Brando in Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece, The Godfather.
Documentarian Naomi Mark returns home to the Yukon to learn the craft of beekeeping from her father, Don Mark. Seasons change along with Don’s health, making the relationship between father, daughter, and bees grow all the more important.
Call Me Intern calls attention to unpaid labour and new generation of activists who are organizing against, and even suing, some of their former employers.
A unique and thrilling investigation with multiple twists and turns, Corradino Durruti’s film serves as a chilling study of the morals and mores of both the Italian police and of the notorious ‘Ndrangheta, a powerful criminal network with tentacles reaching deep into the corporate and political worlds.
Filmmaker Jewel Maranan follows the plight of four families living in the impoverished Manilan district of Tondo as the government forces their resettlement, casting a critical look at the everyday violence that precedes the construction of a globalized city.
Resilience in the face of disaster is at the heart of Shannon Walsh’s expansive study. Shot across five different countries, Walsh introduces us to five courageous women, each encountering their own form of crisis.
Martina is a visual artist living in Italy. Mahmoud is a nuclear engineering student living in Libya. An unlikely friendship develops between the two when Martina becomes interested in documenting her grandparents’ history in Tripoli, where they lived before fleeing the country as a result of Muammar Gaddafi’s 1970 coup d’état.
Meet Mymy, a young medical student who measures her body’s chemical burden from over 27 different cosmetic products. With exclusive access to scientists, lawyers, and whistle-blowers, Toxic Beauty critically examines the global cosmetic industry.
Indigenous, Black and People of Colour communities are disproportionately underrepresented in all media. How do past images unearthed from personal and institutional archives come to shape new stories?
Xalko is a Kurdish village in Turkey — a small, isolated collection of modest houses, ramshackle livestock pens, and scrubby landscape. Director Sami Mermer returns to his hometown to craft an intimate portrait of the women in his family and a place threatened by exodus.
In both amateur and professional sports, being gay remains taboo. Standing on the Line looks at the experiences of LGBTQ+ athletes in Canada who set out to overcome prejudice.
Anna Rún Tryggvadóttir, Elín Hansdóttir, Hanna Björk Valsdóttir
Iceland
2019
73 minutes
Wednesday, May 8, 2019 - 4:15pm
Sunday, May 12, 2019 - 12:00pm
For the past 25 years, Snorri Magnusson has operated an infant swim class pushing the boundaries of what we believe tiny humans are capable of. More than just a swim class, Snorri offers a sense of connection and community for new families navigating the beginnings of parenthood.
Few events in recent Canadian history have sparked as much media attention and outrage as the death of Colten Boushie, a young Cree man who was murdered on a farm in rural Saskatchewan in 2016. Tasha Hubbard’s essential film follows his family’s fight for justice while casting an unflinching look at systemic racism in Canada.
Daily life at the Los Reyes skate park in Santiago, Chile, is unremarkable, but as this wonderfully original film unfolds, we become aware that human affairs — of street cleaners, small-time drug dealers, and skateboarders — are incidental to the real story here. The stars of this film are its two canine subjects — Football and Chola.
Instructions on Parting is an intimate portrait of the filmmaker’s own life and of those dearest to her as they deal with marriage, childbirth, and three cancer diagnoses in her immediate family.
A post-Fordist drama that provides a gripping and often humorous insider-look at cultural differences between workers, with a sharp-eyed examination of shifting power in the global economy, American Factory follows the revival of an industrial plant in Dayton, Ohio after Fuyao, a Chinese automotive glass company, takes over.
An unflinching look at the #FeesMustFall student movement that stormed onto the South African political landscape in 2015 as a protest over the cost of education.
Every summer, thousands of fingernail-sized Western toads cover a rural road in the community of Ryder Lake in Chilliwack, British Columbia. When the toadlets migrate from their breeding ground in the wetlands into the forest, many never make it to the other side of the road.
Part of Longing and Belonging: 1990s South Asian Film and Video, this series of shorts includes The Wild Woman in the Woods, Bolo! Bolo!, and Coconut/Cane & Cutlass.
In his debut feature, director Ian Soroka creates an evocative portrait of the southern Slovenian landscape that facilitated what is considered to be Europe’s most effective resistance movement during World War II.
Propaganda has been harnessed as a powerful weapon to shape worldviews through compelling images and narratives. In an era of fake news and alternative facts, director Larry Weinstein asks the question: How do we know what we know?
Shooting Indians begins with Ali Kazimi, a newly arrived student in Canada, unraveling the hidden history of the land he has chosen as his new home after taking interest in the career of his friend and colleague, Iroquois photographer Jeffrey Thomas.
Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool tracks the artist’s history from his affluent upbringing as the son of a prominent Illinois dentist, through his training at Julliard in New York, and on to the truly remarkable records and performances which defined his apex years of creativity from the mid 1950s to the late 1970s. Fans of Davis will revel in watching never-before-seen footage and learning more about the complex man behind his canonical body of music.
Giovanni Donfrancesco’s extensive portrait of Piero Bonamico gives flesh to one of the darkest hours of Italian history. This perpetrator’s narrative of rising tension, violence and remorse is a journey down the winding road of memory that speaks eerily to the present day.
To the majority of people alive and breathing in the year 2000, Who Let The Dogs Out? is the name of a massively popular radio hit by the flash-in-the-pan group Baha Men. To artist Ben Sisto, it is a philosophical question that challenges accepted notions of authorship and creative ownership.
What does it mean to be the person responsible for a parent’s care? Nelleke Koop follows three women who care for their aging mothers with dementia while balancing jobs and other family obligations.
Weaving her personal experience with archival propaganda and testimonies, Nanfu Wang reveals the human rights violations and trauma caused by the Chinese government’s one-child policy.
Over a five-year collection of visits to her childhood home in the West Texas town of Lubbock, Nadia Shihab explores questions of identity in diaspora through the life and work of her visual artist mother.
Arresting and unique, Midnight Traveler is at once an intimate study of displacement as well as a compelling road movie. The journey of the Afghani Fazili family begins in Tajikistan, where a long wait has resulted in the rejection of their asylum claim.
Directed by her youngest son Hepi Mita, Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen is a tender posthumous tribute to his mother’s life and career. A notorious agitator, her films bear witness to the injustice Māori people face in New Zealand, providing a voice for Māori people and especially for Māori women.
A meditative journey along two rivers — the Ganges in India, and the Biobío in Chile — that serves as a junction between two similar but distinct ways of life.
A conservative Indo-Canadian family in small-town British Columbia must come to terms with a devastating secret: three sisters were sexually abused by an older relative beginning in their childhood years.
A Bright Light: Karen and the Process follows three women on an oneiric road trip as they trace folk musician Karen Dalton's movements across the American landscape back to Woodstock.
With the rise of populism, extremism, racism, and indifference, democracy is in crisis and nobody seems able to find a cure. Director Claudia Tosi explores how this crisis unfolds in Italy through the battles of two remarkable women, Manuela Ghizzoni and Daniela DePietri, both members of the country’s Democratic Party.
In 1987, the sudden death of the head of Italy’s largest publishing house triggered a battle of succession between two of the country’s most aggressive businessmen: Silvio Berlusconi and Carlo De Benedetti. Four years later, Berlusconi is charged with corruption.
Through interviews with common folk and politicians alike, Push shows the strain that cities across the globe have felt as housing has become a commodity for the wealthy, rather than a necessity for the many.
Existential water cooler talk and gallows humour is standard for cemetery workers as they prepare bodies and remove old caskets from tombs, while playfully discussing the afterlife, armageddon, and the benefits of cremation. Director Miguel Eek asks us to abandon sentimentality in order to ponder the more functional aspects of death.
Director Nettie Wild and her Canadian/Mexican crew capture eight months in the life of the Zapatista National Liberation Army revolution in the southern state of Chiapas, Mexico.
Randomly selected by a computer, 60 apprehensive common citizens take their places in the courtroom of the Milan Assize Court of Appeal, which tries Italy’s most notorious criminals.
Expert documentarian Mosco Levi Boucault studies the logic of the 1978 Moro affair from within the Red Brigades organization, through in-depth testimonies by four members of the command who organized Moro’s kidnapping to demand the release of 13 imprisoned revolutionary fighters.
Candice Vadala aka Candida Royalle is known to many as the “godmother of feminist porn.” Director Sheona McDonald goes beyond the headlines to craft a layered portrait of the woman behind the icon, capturing Vadala in her sixties when, confronted with an ovarian cancer diagnosis.
A live documentary performance that combines the collective sharing of one’s personal life — now habitual on social media — with the 20th century tradition of a family slideshow to unearth the poetry found within the everyday.
Features disarmingly honest musings from Lightfoot himself, as well as astonishing archival footage which captures him during his earliest days of performing, Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind provides an illuminating and emotional glimpse into the personality and behind-the-scenes life of a Canadian legend.
It’s August in New York City and the otherwise warm and inviting cityscape is permeated by an undercurrent of unease. Climate change, unemployment, race and class tensions, and loss of community — Brett Story’s simple questions of the New Yorkers she encounters around the different boroughs reveal that these issues are on everyone’s lips, and the languid summer moments feel like the quiet before a great storm.
Randomly selected by a computer, 60 apprehensive common citizens take their places in the courtroom of the Milan Assize Court of Appeal, which tries Italy’s most notorious criminals.
Great works of documentary have been shaped into compelling stories. But should every film be molded into a traditional story structure? Using Alexandra Juhasz and Alisa Lebow’s essay as a starting point, we invite filmmakers to discuss unique formal and narrative approaches to documentary storytelling beyond the plot and character-driven arc.
How do ethical considerations influence artistic choices when presenting delicate subject matter on screen? Our invited filmmakers will discuss how they establish ongoing consent with their participants and the considerations behind portraying moments of vulnerability in their films.
Get the insider perspective on what key decision-makers are looking for and best practices for pitching your projects. This discussion will also provide an overview of funding opportunities available to BC creators.
When the small remote town of Maniitsoq, Greenland, is chosen as the site for American aluminum company ALCOA’s new smelting plant, the locals wait with bated breath for construction to begin.
In Buddy, veteran Dutch director Heddy Honigmann crafts a heartwarming exploration of the dog-human bond, celebrating the extraordinary skills of service dogs and how they support the physical and emotional health of their companions.
Throughout his career, filmmaker Mosco Boucault has established trust with insider protagonists from the French Resistance, Italian Red Brigade commandos, and some of the most powerful Mafia networks in the world.
The Molenbeek district of Brussels is oft-seen as contentious and brimming with unrest when spoken about in the media, but director Reetta Huhtanen deliberately captures the neighbourhood through a more innocent set of eyes. Meet Aatos and Amine, 6-year-old best friends living in the same building block who share an exuberant imagination.
A remote Sicilian reception centre for unaccompanied migrant minors is about to close, and six teenagers are left awaiting the decision that will seal their fate.
City Dreamers offers a glimpse into the careers of four trailblazing urban architects of the 20th century: Phyllis Lambert, Blanche Lemco van Ginkel, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, and Denise Scott Brown. Each of the four boasts an impressive and decades-long career in shaping urban spaces.
Freddy is 30 years old and yearns to start a family. For him, this ordinary desire comes with unique challenges. He is a gay transgender man, and the decision to carry his own baby required years of soul searching.
There is a crisis in Mexico. While headlines that sensationalize drug cartels and glorify bosses like El Chapo hint at the problem, Julien Elie’s epic Dark Suns reveals the terrifying extent of the violence and its consequences.
Corleone delivers a Shakespearean storyline about the rise and fall of Teodoro Totò Riina, the real-life godfather who was born into the same village as Vito Corleone played by Marlon Brando in Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece, The Godfather.
Documentarian Naomi Mark returns home to the Yukon to learn the craft of beekeeping from her father, Don Mark. Seasons change along with Don’s health, making the relationship between father, daughter, and bees grow all the more important.
Existential water cooler talk and gallows humour is standard for cemetery workers as they prepare bodies and remove old caskets from tombs, while playfully discussing the afterlife, armageddon, and the benefits of cremation. Director Miguel Eek asks us to abandon sentimentality in order to ponder the more functional aspects of death.
Freddy is 30 years old and yearns to start a family. For him, this ordinary desire comes with unique challenges. He is a gay transgender man, and the decision to carry his own baby required years of soul searching.
Indigenous women around the world are contributing to a new cinematic wave. In Canada, some of the most celebrated documentaries in recent years have been directed by First Nations, Métis, and Inuit women.
Call Me Intern calls attention to unpaid labour and new generation of activists who are organizing against, and even suing, some of their former employers.
For the producer seeking a path to market through film festivals, pragmatic and informed decisions must be made. This workshop will provide an overview of the options, opportunities, and alternatives to film festival distribution.
Join Josephine Anderson and Claire Sanford as they discuss their transition to virtual reality storytelling from a documentary filmmaker's perspective.
A unique and thrilling investigation with multiple twists and turns, Corradino Durruti’s film serves as a chilling study of the morals and mores of both the Italian police and of the notorious ‘Ndrangheta, a powerful criminal network with tentacles reaching deep into the corporate and political worlds.
Filmmaker Jewel Maranan follows the plight of four families living in the impoverished Manilan district of Tondo as the government forces their resettlement, casting a critical look at the everyday violence that precedes the construction of a globalized city.
Resilience in the face of disaster is at the heart of Shannon Walsh’s expansive study. Shot across five different countries, Walsh introduces us to five courageous women, each encountering their own form of crisis.
Martina is a visual artist living in Italy. Mahmoud is a nuclear engineering student living in Libya. An unlikely friendship develops between the two when Martina becomes interested in documenting her grandparents’ history in Tripoli, where they lived before fleeing the country as a result of Muammar Gaddafi’s 1970 coup d’état.
A conservative Indo-Canadian family in small-town British Columbia must come to terms with a devastating secret: three sisters were sexually abused by an older relative beginning in their childhood years.
When the small remote town of Maniitsoq, Greenland, is chosen as the site for American aluminum company ALCOA’s new smelting plant, the locals wait with bated breath for construction to begin.
Documentarian Naomi Mark returns home to the Yukon to learn the craft of beekeeping from her father, Don Mark. Seasons change along with Don’s health, making the relationship between father, daughter, and bees grow all the more important.
Meet Mymy, a young medical student who measures her body’s chemical burden from over 27 different cosmetic products. With exclusive access to scientists, lawyers, and whistle-blowers, Toxic Beauty critically examines the global cosmetic industry.
Indigenous, Black and People of Colour communities are disproportionately underrepresented in all media. How do past images unearthed from personal and institutional archives come to shape new stories?
Xalko is a Kurdish village in Turkey — a small, isolated collection of modest houses, ramshackle livestock pens, and scrubby landscape. Director Sami Mermer returns to his hometown to craft an intimate portrait of the women in his family and a place threatened by exodus.
Meet Mymy, a young medical student who measures her body’s chemical burden from over 27 different cosmetic products. With exclusive access to scientists, lawyers, and whistle-blowers, Toxic Beauty critically examines the global cosmetic industry.
In both amateur and professional sports, being gay remains taboo. Standing on the Line looks at the experiences of LGBTQ+ athletes in Canada who set out to overcome prejudice.
Anna Rún Tryggvadóttir, Elín Hansdóttir, Hanna Björk Valsdóttir
Iceland
2019
73 minutes
Wednesday, May 8, 2019 - 4:15pm
Sunday, May 12, 2019 - 12:00pm
For the past 25 years, Snorri Magnusson has operated an infant swim class pushing the boundaries of what we believe tiny humans are capable of. More than just a swim class, Snorri offers a sense of connection and community for new families navigating the beginnings of parenthood.
Few events in recent Canadian history have sparked as much media attention and outrage as the death of Colten Boushie, a young Cree man who was murdered on a farm in rural Saskatchewan in 2016. Tasha Hubbard’s essential film follows his family’s fight for justice while casting an unflinching look at systemic racism in Canada.
Daily life at the Los Reyes skate park in Santiago, Chile, is unremarkable, but as this wonderfully original film unfolds, we become aware that human affairs — of street cleaners, small-time drug dealers, and skateboarders — are incidental to the real story here. The stars of this film are its two canine subjects — Football and Chola.
Instructions on Parting is an intimate portrait of the filmmaker’s own life and of those dearest to her as they deal with marriage, childbirth, and three cancer diagnoses in her immediate family.
A post-Fordist drama that provides a gripping and often humorous insider-look at cultural differences between workers, with a sharp-eyed examination of shifting power in the global economy, American Factory follows the revival of an industrial plant in Dayton, Ohio after Fuyao, a Chinese automotive glass company, takes over.
A meditative journey along two rivers — the Ganges in India, and the Biobío in Chile — that serves as a junction between two similar but distinct ways of life.
Few events in recent Canadian history have sparked as much media attention and outrage as the death of Colten Boushie, a young Cree man who was murdered on a farm in rural Saskatchewan in 2016. Tasha Hubbard’s essential film follows his family’s fight for justice while casting an unflinching look at systemic racism in Canada.
An unflinching look at the #FeesMustFall student movement that stormed onto the South African political landscape in 2015 as a protest over the cost of education.
Every summer, thousands of fingernail-sized Western toads cover a rural road in the community of Ryder Lake in Chilliwack, British Columbia. When the toadlets migrate from their breeding ground in the wetlands into the forest, many never make it to the other side of the road.
Part of Longing and Belonging: 1990s South Asian Film and Video, this series of shorts includes The Wild Woman in the Woods, Bolo! Bolo!, and Coconut/Cane & Cutlass.
In his debut feature, director Ian Soroka creates an evocative portrait of the southern Slovenian landscape that facilitated what is considered to be Europe’s most effective resistance movement during World War II.
Propaganda has been harnessed as a powerful weapon to shape worldviews through compelling images and narratives. In an era of fake news and alternative facts, director Larry Weinstein asks the question: How do we know what we know?
Through interviews with common folk and politicians alike, Push shows the strain that cities across the globe have felt as housing has become a commodity for the wealthy, rather than a necessity for the many.
Corleone delivers a Shakespearean storyline about the rise and fall of Teodoro Totò Riina, the real-life godfather who was born into the same village as Vito Corleone played by Marlon Brando in Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece, The Godfather.
Martina is a visual artist living in Italy. Mahmoud is a nuclear engineering student living in Libya. An unlikely friendship develops between the two when Martina becomes interested in documenting her grandparents’ history in Tripoli, where they lived before fleeing the country as a result of Muammar Gaddafi’s 1970 coup d’état.
Daily life at the Los Reyes skate park in Santiago, Chile, is unremarkable, but as this wonderfully original film unfolds, we become aware that human affairs — of street cleaners, small-time drug dealers, and skateboarders — are incidental to the real story here. The stars of this film are its two canine subjects — Football and Chola.
Propaganda has been harnessed as a powerful weapon to shape worldviews through compelling images and narratives. In an era of fake news and alternative facts, director Larry Weinstein asks the question: How do we know what we know?
Shooting Indians begins with Ali Kazimi, a newly arrived student in Canada, unraveling the hidden history of the land he has chosen as his new home after taking interest in the career of his friend and colleague, Iroquois photographer Jeffrey Thomas.
Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool tracks the artist’s history from his affluent upbringing as the son of a prominent Illinois dentist, through his training at Julliard in New York, and on to the truly remarkable records and performances which defined his apex years of creativity from the mid 1950s to the late 1970s. Fans of Davis will revel in watching never-before-seen footage and learning more about the complex man behind his canonical body of music.
Giovanni Donfrancesco’s extensive portrait of Piero Bonamico gives flesh to one of the darkest hours of Italian history. This perpetrator’s narrative of rising tension, violence and remorse is a journey down the winding road of memory that speaks eerily to the present day.
To the majority of people alive and breathing in the year 2000, Who Let The Dogs Out? is the name of a massively popular radio hit by the flash-in-the-pan group Baha Men. To artist Ben Sisto, it is a philosophical question that challenges accepted notions of authorship and creative ownership.
A Bright Light: Karen and the Process follows three women on an oneiric road trip as they trace folk musician Karen Dalton's movements across the American landscape back to Woodstock.
The Molenbeek district of Brussels is oft-seen as contentious and brimming with unrest when spoken about in the media, but director Reetta Huhtanen deliberately captures the neighbourhood through a more innocent set of eyes. Meet Aatos and Amine, 6-year-old best friends living in the same building block who share an exuberant imagination.
City Dreamers offers a glimpse into the careers of four trailblazing urban architects of the 20th century: Phyllis Lambert, Blanche Lemco van Ginkel, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, and Denise Scott Brown. Each of the four boasts an impressive and decades-long career in shaping urban spaces.
A post-Fordist drama that provides a gripping and often humorous insider-look at cultural differences between workers, with a sharp-eyed examination of shifting power in the global economy, American Factory follows the revival of an industrial plant in Dayton, Ohio after Fuyao, a Chinese automotive glass company, takes over.
What does it mean to be the person responsible for a parent’s care? Nelleke Koop follows three women who care for their aging mothers with dementia while balancing jobs and other family obligations.
Weaving her personal experience with archival propaganda and testimonies, Nanfu Wang reveals the human rights violations and trauma caused by the Chinese government’s one-child policy.
Over a five-year collection of visits to her childhood home in the West Texas town of Lubbock, Nadia Shihab explores questions of identity in diaspora through the life and work of her visual artist mother.
Arresting and unique, Midnight Traveler is at once an intimate study of displacement as well as a compelling road movie. The journey of the Afghani Fazili family begins in Tajikistan, where a long wait has resulted in the rejection of their asylum claim.
Directed by her youngest son Hepi Mita, Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen is a tender posthumous tribute to his mother’s life and career. A notorious agitator, her films bear witness to the injustice Māori people face in New Zealand, providing a voice for Māori people and especially for Māori women.
A conservative Indo-Canadian family in small-town British Columbia must come to terms with a devastating secret: three sisters were sexually abused by an older relative beginning in their childhood years.
Candice Vadala aka Candida Royalle is known to many as the “godmother of feminist porn.” Director Sheona McDonald goes beyond the headlines to craft a layered portrait of the woman behind the icon, capturing Vadala in her sixties when, confronted with an ovarian cancer diagnosis.
Features disarmingly honest musings from Lightfoot himself, as well as astonishing archival footage which captures him during his earliest days of performing, Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind provides an illuminating and emotional glimpse into the personality and behind-the-scenes life of a Canadian legend.
It’s August in New York City and the otherwise warm and inviting cityscape is permeated by an undercurrent of unease. Climate change, unemployment, race and class tensions, and loss of community — Brett Story’s simple questions of the New Yorkers she encounters around the different boroughs reveal that these issues are on everyone’s lips, and the languid summer moments feel like the quiet before a great storm.
Resilience in the face of disaster is at the heart of Shannon Walsh’s expansive study. Shot across five different countries, Walsh introduces us to five courageous women, each encountering their own form of crisis.
In both amateur and professional sports, being gay remains taboo. Standing on the Line looks at the experiences of LGBTQ+ athletes in Canada who set out to overcome prejudice.
Anna Rún Tryggvadóttir, Elín Hansdóttir, Hanna Björk Valsdóttir
Iceland
2019
73 minutes
Wednesday, May 8, 2019 - 4:15pm
Sunday, May 12, 2019 - 12:00pm
For the past 25 years, Snorri Magnusson has operated an infant swim class pushing the boundaries of what we believe tiny humans are capable of. More than just a swim class, Snorri offers a sense of connection and community for new families navigating the beginnings of parenthood.
Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool tracks the artist’s history from his affluent upbringing as the son of a prominent Illinois dentist, through his training at Julliard in New York, and on to the truly remarkable records and performances which defined his apex years of creativity from the mid 1950s to the late 1970s. Fans of Davis will revel in watching never-before-seen footage and learning more about the complex man behind his canonical body of music.
To the majority of people alive and breathing in the year 2000, Who Let The Dogs Out? is the name of a massively popular radio hit by the flash-in-the-pan group Baha Men. To artist Ben Sisto, it is a philosophical question that challenges accepted notions of authorship and creative ownership.
Weaving her personal experience with archival propaganda and testimonies, Nanfu Wang reveals the human rights violations and trauma caused by the Chinese government’s one-child policy.
Arresting and unique, Midnight Traveler is at once an intimate study of displacement as well as a compelling road movie. The journey of the Afghani Fazili family begins in Tajikistan, where a long wait has resulted in the rejection of their asylum claim.
