Ashley McKenzie

Blaise and Nessa are outcast methadone users in their small town. Each day they push a rusty lawnmower door-to-door begging to cut grass. Nessa plots an escape, while Blaise lingers closer to collapse. Tethered to one another, their getaway dreams are kept on a suffocatingly short leash.

A suicidal teen develops a candid rapport with the student from Shanghai assigned to watch her in hospital. A nightly exchange of secrets, text messages and possessions quickly expands the boundaries of their relationship and alters their inner chemistry.

An overworked student finds his life thrown into chaos when he gets involved with a young drug addict.

Two unstable teens live together in a slum apartment. When, in a poetic move, rats start invading their home, they realize that they have to deal with an unspoken matter that is threatening to ruin their relationship.

A meek nine-year old girl struggles to find an object for her tenderness inside the confines of a hard-nosed home environment and post-industrial town.

Rhonda, a reclusive nursing home resident with a tough exterior, has spent months planning her best friend's 100th birthday party, The band is booked, the cake is ordered, and everyone is invited. But when her friend dies on the eve of the celebration, a young nurse must deliver the crushing news, and Rhonda is forced to overcome her loneliness and decide whether or not the party should go on.

In a northern valley of Cape Breton, a camera is relinquished into a remote riverbed. It travels underwater and is enveloped by current, cascading toward an 80-foot waterfall. Water pulses over its surface, forming a mass of microscopic lenses that concentrate the world around; an environment fluidly impressing its mark. In between this rush downstream and a final repose, the precipice of Martha Brook Falls is breached.