Wayne Lavallee

Cree Matriarch Aline Spears survives Canada's residential school system to continue her family's generational fight in the face of systemic starvation, racism, and sexual abuse. The story unfolds over one hundred years with a cumulative force that propels us into the future.

Cree matriarch Aline Spears survives a childhood in Canada’s residential school system to continue her family’s generational fight in the face of systemic starvation, racism, and sexual abuse. She uses her uncanny ability to understand and translate codes into working for a special division of the Canadian Air Force as a Cree code talker in World War II. The story unfolds over 100 years with a cumulative force that propels us into the future.

A down-on-his-luck First Nations Archeologist seeking redemption teams up with a group of misfits from the Rez to break into a museum and reclaim sacred artifacts that rightfully belong to their people.

A young Indigenous couple get a break from their troubled lives when they find each other through a summer of love on the Pow-Wow circuit.

Tombs weaves together the triangular story points of three Oklahoma sisters and their mother who travel to Los Angeles as a part of a relocation program in the 1950s that gave Native Americans the opportunity to become “civilized” by getting jobs in urban centres. When they arrive, they begin to understand that like many east-to-west dreams, the reality is not the new beginning they sought. Abandoned by government policy and in acute poverty, they begin to search for their own, finding home in “the tombs” – the cemented riverways of LA. It is here a young mother is killed, and the lives of her children separate down three very different paths that emerge in 1970s Los Angeles – weaving together one telling, one flood.

The Road Forward is an electrifying musical documentary that connects a pivotal moment in Canada’s civil rights history—the beginnings of Indian Nationalism in the 1930s—with the powerful momentum of First Nations activism today. Interviews and musical sequences describe how a tiny movement, the Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood, grew to become a successful voice for change across the country. Visually stunning, The Road Forward seamlessly connects past and present through superbly produced story-songs with soaring vocals, blues, rock, and traditional beats.

An intimate look into the mind of Niall McNeil, an artist and performer with Down syndrome, and his unique chosen family. In Lay Down Your Heart, Niall introduces us to his many “family members,” his multiple “children,” his renowned “ex-wife” and director of the film Marie Clements, and other bonds forged through open-hearted creativity.

Documentary about the Holy Angels Residential School in Alberta, where hundreds of First Nations children were imprisoned.