Ann Verrall

After a night spent drinking and partying, a group of six best friends is torn apart when they accidentally kill their bisexual friend Caz when he darts in front of their car. A year later, Caz appears to Tess as an eternally-horny angel who only Tess can see. It's up to her to reunite the remaining five friends so Caz can move on, but things don't always go according to plan.

Unable to remember a violent incident, a young woman, Iona, returns to a place of magic and love to look for answers. Through interracial relationships and the healing potential of a talking circle, the film explores violence in young relationships and the moment of choice we face when the urge to be violent surfaces.

High school is over, summer is ending, and Jake must say goodbye to his best friend Sarah but can’t. Instead, he confesses his true love and his desire to go with her. When Sarah rejects him, Jake seeks out escape by any means necessary: random sex, violence, going crazy, even buying into Charles’ deluded dream of driving to Toronto to become a stand up comic. But Jake’s real escape route leads not along the open road. It leads in the direction of a crazed dancing stranger.

At the edge of the world a Child learns from her Grandmother that she is descended from the fairies. She longs to know more but her Grandmother is silent. To find the story of her past, the Child enter the land of The In-between and travels to the beginning of time when Fairies roamed the earth. But the story she finds is not the one she wants. In a fit of anger she sends her Grandmother down into the sea to find the magic story she wishes for. Filled with remorse, she plunges into the sea to bring her back. As the Child sinks, the sleeping world of fairies begins to stir and the long lost secrets are awakened. The Water’s Tale is a story of the interconnection between a woman and the past – herself as a child and the burden of history through the ages.

Phyllis and the Ladybugs is the story of Mi’kmaq Elder Phyllis Googoo’s journey from 1948 as a frightened 4-year-old at the Shubenacadie Residential School in Nova Scotia, (the only residential school in Atlantic Canada) to sharing her story of survival with the Pope in Rome in 2022. As a child, she was forbidden to speak her language. To preserve it, she secretly spoke Mi’kmaq to the ladybugs. Phyllis never lost her language. She raised her children to be fluent speakers and taught Mi’kmaq at We’koqma’q Mi’kmaw School in We’koqma’q First Nation, Cape Breton Nova Scotia. This creative collaboration between Phyllis and Halifax filmmaker Ann Verrall, was inspired by Phyllis’ deep desire to share her story so that there will be greater understanding of today’s Indigenous youth.

This video addresses the complex and rich cultural history inherited by the children of immigrants. While official History is often presented as a single truth, "truth" is multi-layered and multi-valent. Through a layering of stories from Italian immigrants, images from Super 8 family films, and remembrances of my grandmother, "America il Paradiso" seeks to express the complexity of history.