Discover Movies

Filmmaker Kevin McMahon accompanies the Haida delegation on a repatriation trip to Chicago in 2003. His film reveals the whole repatriation process through the stories and experiences of the people who participated, both Museum staff and the Haida people.

Within the ancient precambrian rock of northern Canada lies one of the largest reserves of Uranium on the planet. A power that has produced the greatest destructive energy known to man, it also manifests itself in the natural glory of the region. A Gothic travelogue that calls for dialogue with the ghosts of the region; mining towns swallowed up in the pandemonium of trade, extraction and abandonment. While unknown forces that inhabit these lands speaks in somber memories.

A cartoon film about the whole heterogeneous mixture of Canada and Canadians, and the way the invisible adhesive called federalism makes it all cling together. That the dissenting voices are many is made amply evident, in English and French. But this animated message also shows that Canadians can laugh at themselves and work out their problems objectively.

In 1961, philosopher Roland Barthes collaborated with filmmaker Hubert Aquin to produce a film, for Canadian television, intended to reveal the poetics of sport and spectatorship. The question 'what is sport' is answered by Barthes' eloquently scripted commentary. The recurring theme of purging violence from society into the spectacle of sport runs through the film.

Memories of his four-year journey focused on the Hong Kong protests. Narrated in the first person, is rich with reflections and contemplations, most intertwined with feelings of guilt.

Set in the sparsely populated lobster fishing villages of southern Nova Scotia, Plains is a cinema vérité approach to documenting the curious lives of Jon and Cat, a young couple who are developing politically left-leaning virtual reality video games. Against the busy backdrop of their art practice, we sit in on their quiet rural life, which, in its proximity to nature and the vast green and oceanic spaces that surround, echoes the romanticism of a simpler time. As the decaying world of physical labour and the mechanical industry faces up to an expanding digital empire, Jon gradually retreats into the alternative realities of his own design.

This short film demonstrates how Howard Shore has distinguished himself as one of Canada's most accomplished - and versatile - composers. During woodland rambles with his beloved dogs, Shore gives free rein to his ceaseless creativity. Whether composing delicate counterpoint or Oscar®-winning movie music, Shore is keenly tuned to a remarkable range of musical expression.

Short film by Keith Lock and Jim Anderson.

Guy Nadon is the rhythm incarnate. A jazz drummer who strikes on everything that makes noise. A king of musical improvisation, but also a king of improvisation, sometimes holding words bordering on surrealism.

To get to class on time, children from the Raymur Place social housing project were forced to jump shunting train cars that stood in their path. In 1971, after months of petitioning for a safe crossing, a group of mothers made their voices heard by blockading CN rail from delivering goods.

Terrarium unfolds through seven tightly woven perspectives projected across a double-screen film. Each character acts as a seedling, embodying urgent socio-ecological challenges and sparking alternative ways of seeing and responding to the world. These intertwined visions propose that meaningful solutions emerge through symbiosis—between human and non-human communities and with the socio-ecological environments we share.

"Keeping Up with Cathy Jones" is a biographical romp through the life and times of this outrageously funny lady of stage, screen and television. From the first celluloid glimpses of "CATHY AT 16", "THIS HOUR HAS 22 MINUTES", her one woman shows and stand-up routines to interview clips with Cathy, her family and friends, this is a highly charged bio-pic; a salute to Newfoundland's comic genius."

Tenants of public housing in Ottawa challenge the process of managing public housing projects in meetings with federal, provincial and municipal officials.

Dramatised documentary which describes the police investigation that led to the conviction of David Mulcahy for the notorious Railway Murders in the 1980s of three young women in the London area and for the rapes of many others. This investigation was based largely on the testimony of John Duffy to a psychologist in prison where he was serving life after being convicted of the same offences ten years earlier, having denied at the time of his trial that he had had an accomplice (Mulcahy). -Anonymous

This short documentary profiles a community engaged in developing sustainable living methods, including food production and small-scale solar and wind technology, on a farm in Massachusetts in the 1970s. Well before sustainability was a mainstream concern, these prescient innovators attempted to create a vision of a greener, kinder world. "Think small," say the New Alchemists. "Look what thinking big has done."

In this personal and subjective film, we come across Jim Rogers, a trapper, native of Fort McMurray, and unsuccessful candidate in the last municipal elections, which saw the small town become what it is today: a modern version of the gold rush, black as oil. This film is a sequel to the 2013 viral application of the same name that was both a video game and interactive documentary.

About to put on a sex positive party for disabled people Andrew Gurza discusses the realities of sex, disability and queerness.

On the Magdalen Islands, during the short lobster season, fishermen and plant workers ensure the economic prosperity of an entire people. In the reality of a global market driven by the United States, the fragility of the fishing industry is palpable, as is the future of seafaring and island culture.

Engaging themes of love and betrayal, hope, belonging and place, Glad You’re Here documents my nineteen--year journey through building a family life, seeing it suffer the damage of mental illness, grief and separation, and then rebuilding with empathy. A story about an extreme moment of crisis has turned into a documentary that deals not just with the subjective but with the important issue of spousal abuse.

Set in the remote fly-in community of Sandy Lake First Nation in Northwestern Ontario, Muddy Water explores the transformative power of music, culture, and youth empowerment.

In "The Shirt" Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk) artist and director Shelley Niro parodies the archetypal tourist tee-shirt from the point of view of First Nations Peoples as an exploration into the lasting effects of European colonialism in North America. Facing the camera directly and poised against the landscape of “America”, an Aboriginal woman with biker-like accessories bears a sequential series of statements on her tee-shirt that together comprise a discourse on colonialism. The darkly ironic and yet brutally truthful messages of "The Shirt" draw attention to the history of invasion that indigenous peoples have experienced in North America.

A cemetery in St. John, New Brunswick, Canada is seen through the eyes of its former superintendent.

Short documentary about Quebecois store owners.

Born from scattered conversations, gleaned memories, and the whims of a season, Cold Calls traverses the moods of the white world: storms in Whistler, Japanese powder, Norwegian vastness, rare sunny spells in Alaska. Each call becomes a story, funny, serious, or simply human. In the end, nothing was really planned, but everything seems to fall into place. In doing so, it questions the reasons that drive us to act this way and reveals the inexplicable joy that skiing brings.

An original video diary documenting the director's efforts to have artificial insemination. Cuthand describes his desire to have children of his own and the difficult journey he must take to have them, a journey that is also closely tied to his membership in Canada's First Nations and thus to the question of preserving his indigenous culture.

On the eve of the publication of a biography of Claude Jutra, one of the most famous and celebrated filmmakers in Quebec and Canada, a leak leaked to the press reveals that the book contains anonymous allegations of pedophile acts committed by the filmmaker. The rumor spread like lightning, suddenly igniting the entirety of Quebec society. By finding today some of the main witnesses propelled overnight into the heart of an unparalleled media tornado, the documentary reconstructs with archive images and other previously unpublished images, the sequence of events which led to a rewriting of the story.

This film takes a critical look at both sides of a contentious issue - Canadian gun owners and lobbyists who are winning new converts and have successfully repealed gun control legislation, and those who view deregulation, gun ownership and gun violence with serious apprehension.

Every month in Quebec, hundreds of detainees gain their freedom after serving their sentences. What happens to these detainees once released? And what freedom do they find on the other side of the bars?

A filmmaker arrives at a remote farm in northern Canada, where an old school bus conceals a massive rock believed to be a priceless meteorite. The search for truth blurs the line between fact and fiction.

After the death of two mares at the stables where she works as a caretaker, a young woman travels from barn to barn in search of a horse to be a companion to the single remaining gelding at her barn.

Grant Fuhr was the first black superstar in hockey. He won 403 regular season NHL games and is a member of the 2003 class of the Hockey Hall of Fame. Making Coco is the story of Fuhr's life, on and off the ice.

At the oldest-running queer theatre in the world, Toronto's most cerebral drag queen and "tragicomedienne" Pearle Harbour prepares to take the stage for her new show "Battle Cry: Songs Of Warfare & Gaiety".

In a country offering almost no treatment services despite a crisis of addiction, Laila Haidari took the highly unusual decision to found her own pioneering addiction treatment center and a restaurant where all of the waiters are recovering heroin addicts. A deeply personal perspective on the global addiction epidemic, the film follows the labor of love of one woman fighting to keep her center alive in the face of physical threats, governmental opposition and the departure of the international community from Afghanistan.

How the Fiddle Flows follows Canada's great rivers west along the fur-trading route of the early Europeans. The newcomers introduced the fiddle to the Aboriginal people they intermarried with along the way. A generation later, their mixed-blood offspring would blend European folk tunes with First Nations rhythms to create a rich and distinct musical tradition. From the Gaspé Peninsula, north to Hudson Bay and to the Prairies, How the Fiddle Flows reveals how a distinctive Metis identity and culture were shaped over time. Featuring soaring performances by some of Canada's best known fiddlers and step dancers and narrated by award-winning actress Tantoo Cardinal.

Dean Wilson may be Canada’s most powerful junkie. He shoots heroin in Vancouver’s downtown Eastside and strategizes with federal health policy advisors. He is the president of a network of street-level drug users demanding that Vancouver open North America’s first safe injection site – the most controversial step of a daring new drug strategy. Users, residents, activists and police clash while Dean struggles to shake his addiction and discovers an unlikely ally in Vancouver’s conservative mayor.

On the eve of an inevitable exodus to urban centers, the youth of Témiscamingue are torn between the quest for a better future and their attachment to their homeland.

For 31 years Dennis Rader aka BTK killer was able to live a double life. This documentary chronicle's comprehensive interviews with law enforcement, victim's family members, reporters and his daughter Kerri Rawson.

From a sun-drenched bathing beach to an awesome “gamma garden,” this film explores how heat, radio waves, x-rays and gamma rays affect various forms of life. It takes you to the radiological department of a modern hospital, to Canada’s atomic research center at Chalk River, and to the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the United States, where plant growth is subjected to gamma radiation.

Did you ever have a crush on Anne Murray, singing her greatest hits with your dress tucked into your pantyhose? And what about Anne of Green Gables? These questions and oh so much more are autobiographically answered by performance artist Dayna McLeod in this mash-up that mixes Anne Murray's, “You Needed Me” with the made-for-television Canadian classic, Anne of Green Gables. Originally commissioned as a performance piece for Anne Made Me Gay, curated by Moynan King and Rosemary Rowe, Buddies in Bad Times.

Sightings of great white sharks have been rising in Atlantic Canada. Alanna Canaran is on a mission to unravel the enigmas surrounding these creatures, determined to dispel fear of sharks in Nova Scotians. Canaran gathers invaluable knowledge of these magnificent creatures,contributing to a better understanding of white sharks in Canada.

Women of the Arnait Video Collective reenact a traditional women's activity: the use of the qulliq. The qulliq is the seal oil lamp and stove of the old days, the only source of light and warmth. The women tell the story in words and songs as they install the qulliq in their igloo.

This short animation transports us from the farthest conceivable point of the universe to the tiniest particle of existence, an atom of a living human cell. The art of animation and animation camera achieve this exhilarating journey with a freshness and clarity. Without words.

Through the stories of four women that embody the themes of transmission and social commitment, Fermieres takes a sensitive look at the Country Women's Circles, Quebec's oldest women's association.

Nuclear power plants are not exactly sold on the same scale as wheat, but that they can be manufactured as an exportable commodity is well illustrated in this film. For those familiar with nuclear power generation, and even for the lay audience, this is a lucid exposition of how a nuclear power plant is put together. The film shows the machining and assembly of principal components, and the "on power" operation of the Canadian plant at Pickering, Ontario. Produced by the NFB for Atomic Energy of Canada Limited.

Through a tapestry of reflection, rare footage and her own home, Inuk filmmaker Holly Andersen tells the little-known story of the forced relocation of an Inuit community from Hebron, north of Nain, to more southerly locations along the Labrador Coast. Although that painful disruption of 233 lives occurred more than 50 years ago, the repercussions of the move last to this day.

This documentary sets the focus sharply on the often maligned and misunderstood world of sadomasochism. It gives us a glimpse into the life of The Marquesa, a dominatrix who guides us through the S&M community and its rituals and motivations. The Marquesa explores and examines her own relationship to S&M, and to the submissives that make the scenes possible. The video dismantles the myths and fallacies surrounding the practice by a straightforward and frank discussion.

In 1967, Canadian documentarian James Beveridge traveled to Kolkata to film director Satyajit Ray at work. The resulting program, produced for the American public television series “The Creative Person,” features interviews with Ray, several of his actors and crew members, and film critic Chidananda Das Gupta.

From Antosh Cimoszko, an edit featuring David Stenstrom, Dylan Fulford, Donald Glover, Sam Bunton, Douglas Jacobsson, Vincent Hasselberg, David Jakinda, and Elias Mensi.

A rare "inside" view of a motorcycle club in Toronto, one of the network of such fraternal groups in the large centers across North America. The names they adopt (Satan's Choice is only one) are as individual as their special ethics and views of life, all freely expressed in this film.

A glimpse into the lives of three grandmothers in an African village compound in Nigeria, in a hill city in Brazil, and in a rural community in Manitoba.

Toyohiko "Yuki" Ishikawa is a world renowned wrestling master. This is his legendary tale. "Ring of Dreams" documents Ishikawa's history of learning from Karl Gotch and Yoshiaki Fujiwara, establishing the original BATTLARTS in Japan, and eventually teaching his craft in Canada at Battle Arts Academy.

Construction workers denounce their working and living conditions in Montreal. In tune with its time, a political film that testifies Arthur Lamothe's militant cinematographic practice.

This feature-length documentary presents Montreal (in Canada) in all its forms, in all its folds - Montréal bathed in all its lights, summer and winter, revisited by a filmmaker in love with its streets, its streets, its neighborhoods, its parks, its river, its churches, its buildings - Faces of yesterday and today. A disparate city of glass and concrete, shaped by architects who gave it a body and - a soul.

Two Foley artists provide live sound effects to an action scene.