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In her feature documentary Seguridad, Newfoundland-based filmmaker Tamara Segura—once named “Cuba’s youngest soldier” in a militia publicity stunt—portrays her troubled relationship with her father in the context of the Cuban Revolution. When Segura accepts a scholarship to study film in Canada, the move offers crucial distance from her alcoholic father. After four years, she returns to Cuba hoping to make amends. But her father’s sudden death just days after her arrival forces Segura to explore his troubled past and the role Cuba’s highly militarized system played in his downfall. Through a series of deeply personal on-camera interviews with her immediate family, Segura unearths long-held secrets that ultimately tell a story of resilience and profound love between family members. Seguridad artfully weaves a lifetime’s worth of still photographs into its intimate narrative, which offers a rare glimpse into the inner lives of Cubans in the post-revolutionary era.
Wet’suwet’en leaders unite in a battle against the Canadian government, corporations, and militarized law enforcement to safeguard their territory from gas and oil pipelines.
Renowned Inuit lawyer Aaju Peter has long fought for the rights of her people. When her son suddenly dies, Aaju embarks on a journey to reclaim her language and culture after a lifetime of whitewashing and forced assimilation. But can she both change the world and mend her own wounds?
Director Dominique Leclerc spent years depending on medical devices for her survival. Then, looking for alternative solutions, she entered the world of emerging technologies. Posthumans follows her as she meets with cyborgs, biohackers, and transhumanists who are trying to use these technologies to outsmart illness, aging—and even death. The documentary looks at pressing ethical and political questions that are sure to impact the future of our species.
Utilising the Alexeïeff-Parker pinscreen technique, this visually poetic non-narrative film revisits Diego Vélasquez’s 1652 portrait of Queen Mariana of Austria with genuine feeling.
The Pelletier family sets out on an epic journey to see the beauty of the world when three of their four children are diagnosed with an incurable eye condition.
Featuring a salesman and a consumer, this animated short is a humorous study of the patterns that define buyer-seller relationships. The Persistent Peddler is based on Claude Cloutier's hit comic strip La LĂ©gende des Jean-Guy, first introduced in Quebec humour magazine Croc.
Revealing women, showing men Dermatology professor Marie-Claire is embarking on a new project linking skin cells and sexuality, when unexpected events disrupt her professional, family and intimate life.
Caiti Lord had always dreamt of being a singer. A born-and-bred New Yorker, she studied at the best music schools and performed on Broadway. Her future was sparkling bright . . . But today, the only thing that glitters is the snow that falls on the desert. Self-exiled in Madrid, New Mexico, far from the glitz and glamour of the Big Apple, Caiti’s looking for a way forward. In this former ghost town, surrounded by mountains and old hippies, between her day job slinging drinks to tourists and the sleepless festive nights, her life is slipping by. That’s the story she tells each day on her radio show. As the United States sinks into madness and the world turns terrifyingly absurd, Caiti feels increasingly suffocated. She’s about to turn 30 and her future has never felt so uncertain. How can she find her way back to a place of meaning and self-expression?
Follows four women of the estimated 40,000 displaced people moved from the banks of the Xingu River in the Amazon Basin to make space for construction of one of the world's largest dams, the Belo Monte.
Since the early 1990s, when a bloody civil war broke out in Algeria between the government and Islamist militants, the concept of haram—the forbidden—has demanded the rigid separation of men and women. Café Désirs is a fascinating look at a generation of young, single Algerian men as they come of age in the ancient city of Constantine, trapped between strict religious virtue and sexual desire. Three eloquent guides take us into the male-only world of cafés and hookah lounges, to talk openly about their lives, their frustrations with work and the social dangers of living in a sexually repressed society. It's a world especially fraught for those pursuing same-sex relationships, which are illegal and severely punished. Café Désirs is an engaging and complex exploration of male sexuality and gender politics in a country still struggling with the aftermath of civil war and colonialism.
Today, 11 years after the massive earthquake in Haiti that left over a million people homeless and killed hundreds of thousands, the country has still not recovered from the disaster. Despite billions of dollars in aid money, Haiti struggles with some of the highest levels of poverty and unemployment in the Western hemisphere. In Port-au-Prince, various citizens are shuttled through a city in crisis. Maneuvering around barricades, garbage dumps and the packed streets of the capital, they speak candidly about the current state of their country. Through the car window a frustrated population passes and occasionally interacts with the passengers in the vehicle. Beautifully shot, with a lively score, Zo Reken presents a complicated portrait that testifies to the magnitude of the tragedy and highlights the disorganized state of international aid.
Four women share funny and intimate tales of one-sided infatuation, mutual attraction, erotic moments, and fumbling attempts at sexual expression. For them, discovering that they’re attracted to other women comes hand-in-hand with a deeper understanding of their personal identity and a joyful new self-awareness.
Somber tides a cry from the species, startled into survival against the elements. One last breath before being trampled by the Earth or maybe conversely a battle to wage against winds and tides clutching on before extinction.
Walking down the street or sitting on a commuter train, few of us can resist the siren song of that small, illuminated device in our pockets. Through a carefully choreographed collision of hand-made sculptural collages and ink and paint animation, In the Shallows, by first-time NFB filmmaker Arash Akhgari, takes us on a deep dive into the shallow and fragmented world of news, entertainment and ads, where we can easily drown in the dangerous allure of mass media intoxication.
Pascal Marchand arrived in the mythical land of Burgundy to harvest the grapes at age 21. Now 30 years later, he is a renowned wine artist and innovator. Shot over the catastrophic 2016 season, the film is both a love letter and a cautionary tale.
In July 1990, a dispute over a proposed golf course to be built on Kanien’kéhaka (Mohawk) lands in Oka, Quebec, sets the stage for a historic confrontation that would grab international headlines and sear itself into the Canadian consciousness.
In these uncertain times, when Nostradamus and doomsayers are making headlines, this documentary takes a humorous and tongue-in-cheek look at the world of divinatory arts. A fascinating journey into the heart of the unusual, it explores the realms of the paranormal and introduces us to a colorful gallery of characters.
With candor, humour and courage, a group of African-Canadian women challenge cultural taboos surrounding female sexuality and fight to take back ownership of their bodies. Combining her own journey with personal accounts from some of her radiant, endearing friends, co-director Habibata Ouarme explores the phenomenon of female genital mutilation and the road to individual and collective healing, both in Africa and in Canada.
After a Dantean journey, women from Nigeria arrive alone and ever younger in Italy, looking for a better life. Such horrors as human trafficking and sexual slavery are waiting for them, as we discover in this ensemble film featuring harrowing stories told in a sensible way that spares us from the unbearable. These tales provoke a broader reflection on migration and otherness.
