Tess Girard
Directing
Known For

An immersive, behind-the-scenes look at one of the world’s leading ballet companies as it mounts a new production of Swan Lake. Ballet icon Karen Kain, on the eve of her retirement, directs the National Ballet of Canada. The film weaves together intimate scenes of the creative process and the dancers’ personal lives. Executive Produced by Neve Campbell.
Swan Song

Two strangers, Joanne and Chris share a winter road trip through rural eastern Ontario. After losing her husband John, Joanne faces the rituals of remote rural life on her own, while Chris is processing his failing eyesight and the loss of his mother and the new responsibility of taking over her old home in the country. As their journey together unfolds, their drifting memories reveal parallel experiences, helping each of them shift the focus of their destination.
Drifting Snow

Crystal Pite and the artists of the National Ballet return to the stage to remount the critically acclaimed Angels’ Atlas after a nearly two-year shutdown due to the pandemic. Crystal Pite: Angels’ Atlas grants audiences unprecedented access into Pite’s creative process, through intimate rehearsal footage and candid interviews, as the film builds towards an emotional opening night marking the National Ballet’s first performance onstage at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts after lockdown.
Crystal Pite: Angels' Atlas

A founding member of Cape Dorset’s famed printmaking co-op, Kenojuak Ashevak introduced Inuit art to the world.
Heritage Minutes: Kenojuak Ashevak

Mohawk Chief John Norton and 80 Grand River warriors hold off American soldiers until reinforcements arrive and the Battle of Queenston Heights is won (1812).
Heritage Minutes: Queenston Heights

The Acadians are descendants of early French settlers who arrived in Nova Scotia in 1604 and built a distinct culture and society over generations. Their peaceful existence was uprooted in 1755 when over 10,000 Acadians were ripped from their homeland to ensure British rule in North America. This Heritage Minute portrays the deportation through the eyes of an Acadian mother.
Heritage Minutes: Acadian Deportation

The birth of a gymnastics team in Pakistan provides an inspiring spark of light for a small group of girls on the margins.
The Gymnasts of Fisherman Colony

At 68, a formerly enslaved Black Loyalist enlists men for the Coloured Corps, an instrumental company in the War of 1812.
Heritage Minutes: Richard Pierpoint

A meditative and philosophical exploration of rhythm and synchronization. A complex, artfully constructed and densely layered film that creates an immersive experience that can, at times, make the viewer feel almost in situ with the images and sounds on the screen. Interview subjects span a broad range of disciplines. As individuals and as a society, we have a tendency to keep in step.
A simple rhythm

While many have migrated to new spaces during the pandemic, we've all become intimately familiar with the places we call home over the past two years. It's a basic human need, but we're increasingly transient—and in a virtual world, where is our community? Returning to her rural Ontario hometown Horning's Mills and its philosophical residents, filmmaker Tess Girard delicately ponders the spaces we choose to occupy. Conversations with a youthful gravedigger who provides locals with their final resting place contrast with an eccentric elderly couple who plan to save humanity with a bunker of buried school buses known as Ark Two. Girard seeks solace through these interactions while attempting to reconnect to her roots, questioning where she is meant to be. This deeply personal meditation embraces bucolic landscapes down to the smallest detail and grounds itself in quiet, reflective moments.
Shelter

A filmmaker's exploration of fleeting existence. Filtered through a personal story, "Benediction" is a last attempt to pay homage to those things left and leaving. When faced with the realization of her grandfather's mortality, a young filmmaker journeys to find meaning in the wake of absence and loss. Is she trying to hold on to something that was never there?
Benediction

An old man's daily routine and the things he encounters.
Old Growth

Royal Canadian Air Cadets at the top of their class undergo seven weeks of training to get their pilot’s license in an intense program that normally takes six to eight months.