Discover Movies

A documentary of an expedition to Churchill, Manitoba to film the Northern Lights.

Roy Panton and Yvonne Harrison made history as one of the first Jamaican ska duos. Decades after going their separate ways, the pair rekindle their magic—this time, 3,000 kilometres north, in Scarborough, Ontario.

Afflicted by various ailments and symptoms, François, Suzanne and Lorraine adapt or take refuge, challenged by the torments imposed by electrohypersensitivity.

A film showing the new world created by the techniques and processes of the plastics industry. Transmuted from coal, oil or wood, synthetic substances can make thousands of new products, from silk threads to furniture. With a light and lively treatment, this film explores the colorful, versatile world of these synthetic materials.

Filmed in the Indian Himalayas and in Canada, A Song for Tibet tells the dramatic story of the efforts by Tibetans in exile, including the Dalai Lama, to save their homeland and preserve their heritage against overwhelming odds. Since the invasion of their territory by China in the late 1950s, Tibetans have been struggling for cultural and political survival.

One courageous man, considered by many to be a Saint and a Hero, overcomes numerous challenges building schools, orphanages, creating sustainability and delivering much needed care to children all over the world while inspiring others to do the same by his example of selfless service, love and compassion.

In 2019, Blank Collective Films were on a search for an explanation to their insanity. Anticipation. Inspiration. Creativity. Perseverance. Experience. Exploration. And Satisfaction. These 7 Stages are designed to postulate a progression of the emotional stages during a ski season. Simply, the Blank Collective takes you on a journey through the 7 Stages of Blank, a lighthearted look into the bond that develops around the sport of skiing.

A woman seeks to make the outdoors more accessible for fat people – just as they are and without shame. Armed with her slogan “Trails Not Scales”, she soon finds herself hosting events all over North America.

This British film was made about Canadian historian Dan Gibson, who has uncovered startling new archaeological evidence that Mecca was not the original Holy City of Islam.

Delwin Vriend never wanted to be a human rights activist. However, in challenging his firing for being gay, he set in motion a chain of events that impacted the lives of LGBTQ+ people —not just in Alberta, not just in Canada, but around the globe. Pride vs. Prejudice: The Delwin Vriend Story delves into the riveting narrative of the Vriend v. Alberta case, where Delwin Vriend, an unlikely hero, courageously battles against discrimination from a government determined to deny his human rights. Uncover the twists and turns that unfold as Vriend's pursuit of justice challenges societal biases, culminating in a ground-breaking Canadian Supreme Court ruling in 1998 that confronts prejudice and sets a transformative precedent for LGBTQ+ rights that is cited around the world.

Three bandmates set out to professionally record their passion project - an extended playlist of songs they have been hard at work with. This is a documentary about the experiences of starting a rock band and the cost of what it takes to reach a fulfilling outcome. From the visionary minds of REVERA, a grunge-inspired rock band from Alberta, Canada.

This feature documentary about education explores the mid-century state of learning in the classrooms of North America. New approaches to learning and the emerging technologies that facilitate them are explored, including the new roles of the computer, tape recorder and television. Directed by Quebec cinema giant Claude Jutra (Mon Oncle Antoine), the film was produced with the collaboration of researchers studying all forms of education, from infancy to adulthood.

Orange Witness documents the marginalized voices of people who have been exposed to, and affected by Agent Orange. The film paints a bleak picture of the damage caused by the use of herbicides 2,4-D, 2,4,5-T and TCCD internationally. Historically, Agent Orange has been associated with war, but the industrial and domestic of use of the chemical is a story that has yet to reach the masses, until now.

A sympathetic documentary profile of modern China (the first shot in the People’s Republic of China by a North American television crew)

In this documentary profile, Johnston invites the audience to step behind the "crushed velvet curtain" of Bruce Bailey’s life as an investment banker, lawyer, farmer and patron. The enthusiastic collector, who has worked with artists such as Marina Abramovic and Kent Monkman, is one of a few notable individuals who still host traditional art salons; a form of egalitarian lab for the breeding of ideas made popular in seventeenth-century France, where literary luminaries, artists and thinkers gathered to discuss philosophy, politics, art and other matters of the day.

The murder of a gay man on public bus stuns the city of Montreal, but it is only a sign of things to come during a particularly violent summer. A string of murders and attacks on members of the gay community go largely unsolved as public outrage grows.

The daily life of a group of women in an old age home.

Depicting the passage of the four seasons in a single year, this contemplative documentary reveals the tragic yet magnificent decline of a world in agony.

This film aims to show us how young people date in four countries: Canada (Montreal), Sicily (Italy), India, and Iran. Host Renée La Rochelle interviews psychoanalyst André Lussier and anthropologist Marcel Rioux about the main characteristics of the rites and customs surrounding premarital dating.

Montreal, 2013. Dina Mendes, artist and the daughter French criminal superstar Jacques Mesrine had from an affair in 1970, returns to Montreal and looks for her father's traces. She embarks on this search with both personal quest and artistic project in mind. The film shifts from fiction conventions to cinema-vérité, particularly in Percé, where the project reaches its momentum. In the end, Dina Mendes ends up achieving neither the personal quest nor a meaningful artistic project, caught between over-exposed facts and an impossible identification. Nonetheless, what this odd film - in which you will never see or hear Mesrine once - does achieve is to provide a Québec perspective onto a history that is so central to French popular culture.

Melissa Kelly, a Hamilton-based boudoir photographer helps women to feel powerful, confident, and embraced in their own skin. Through candid behind-the-scenes moments and heartfelt client testimonials, this documentary highlights how Melissa's work isn't just photography - it's an act of reclaiming self-worth.

Once upon a time in the Gay Village is a montage of photos and music telling the story of the founding of Le Parc de l’Espoir, the AIDS memorial park in the heart of Montreal’s Gay Village.

Interviews with Dr. Marie-Louise von Franz, eminent psychoanalyst who was a close collaborator with Carl G. Jung, in conversation with her student Fraser Boa, Canadian Jungian analyst.

A feature length documentary about extraordinary Canadian singer songwriter, Ron Hynes... an insightful and entertaining exploration of the creative process, the genesis of song, the meaning of performance and the vulnerability of an artist compelled to bare his soul through his music. The film is comprised of Ron performing his music (distinct and live for the camera), interwoven with very intimate black box 'interviews' with Ron (shot tightly and directly addressed to the camera), in which he discusses the songs and the life that informed them: late nights, dark alleys, marriage, children, divorce, his near death and recovery from drug addiction... and punctuated with back stage moments, insight from the street, and Ron's nephew author Joel Thomas Hynes, taking the role of 'chorus of the people'.

"She Climbs to Conquer" shot by W.J. Oliver, was a noteworthy film which gained well merited acclaim. Made in 1933 it pictured the climb of Georgia Engelhard, a professional mountain climber, from Abbot's Pass to the peak of Mount Victoria.

A powerful film that reveals the human side of the industrial pollution crisis in the Limoilou neighborhood. The air itself becomes a silent killer, quietly invading the lives of its residents.

The focus of this film is on Canada's nuclear research centre at Chalk River, Ontario. Key to atomic progress are the radioactive isotopes. The insertion and handling of these isotopes in the deadly interior of the reactor are shown in detail. Also shown are the applications of radioactive isotopes in various fields of endeavor, particularly medicine, agriculture, and manufacturing industries. Co-produced by the NFB and Crawley Films Ltd. with the assistance of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited.

Réjean Vigneau, a butcher in the Magdalen Islands, has been working to promote seal meat for nearly 30 years. This film explores the challenges of a resource that is abundant in the Gulf waters and remains untapped. It also delves into the possibilities that this meat presents in terms of consumption, industry, and the potential to bring the riverbank residents closer to the river they inhabit.

Across and Down follows a group of passionate crossword connoisseurs (aka “cruciverbalists”) as they fight to improve representation in their cherished puzzle. Crossword puzzles have been ubiquitous for over 100 years. You can find them in magazines and newspapers; they’re online and available through their own apps. In fact, millions of people start their day by solving. But despite the widespread appeal of the crossword, women, people of color and LGBTQ2SIA+ individuals have been almost invisible when it comes to puzzle bylines, clues and solutions. Not only that, but clues can also often be stuck in the past or worse, offensive. But why is this happening?

This documentary tells the story of Quebec nationalism from the late 1960s to the present and how this nationalism has gradually transformed from progressive to a much more conservative streak.

King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (later Queen Mother) in the royal carriage.

This short documentary studies the contrast between the sedate Toronto of the turn of the century and the thriving, expanding metropolis of 1951. Aerial views give evidence of the conversion of the old Toronto into the new--the city with towering skyscrapers, teeming traffic arteries, vast industrial developments and far-reaching residential areas housing over a million people. Toronto's mid-century progress is also Canada's, as manifested in the building of Canada's first subway, and in the bustle of the nation's greatest trading centre--the Toronto Stock Exchange.

The people of the L'íl'wat First Nation record their personal narratives about their culture, history, education, and the impact of residential schools.

A look at the life of André Bessette through expert interviews and interviews with people who knew him.

Beginning with Noam Chomsky's response to a college student who role-plays "Jane U.S.A."--someone who naively believes she lives in a democratic society in which she can create her own destiny--the viewer is presented with a cross-section of typically lively Chomsky encounters. Central to a functioning democracy is the necessity of free access to information, ideas and opinions. But what should be our democratic right turns out to be limited and shaped by the biases of insitutions and ideologies within the mass media. Chomsky shows how governments, corporations and other elites manufacture the consent of the public to serve their interests.

Documentary commissioned by the City of Vancouver focusing on areas in Vancouver considered to be an urban blight

In the coldest waters surrounding Newfoundland's rugged Fogo Island, "people of the fish"—traditional fishers—catch cod live by hand, one at a time, by hook and line. After a 20-year moratorium on North Atlantic cod, the stocks are returning. These fishers are leading a revolution in sustainability, taking their premium product directly to the commercial market for the first time. Travel with them from the early morning hours, spend time on the ocean, and witness the intricacies of a 500-year-old tradition that's making a comeback.

Documentary on the Jews of San Nicandro, Italy; a community of Christians who converted to Judaism during Fascist Italy

An in-depth look at the early 2011 crisis for public sector unions in Wisconsin, and why it matters in Alberta.

Shot on an action-cam in a self-surveillance style; Sebastian archives his week as he reflects on his mental state for the past decade.

Come and experience Tippi's world!

A year after the euphoria on Tahrir Square, the demonstrators' goals have not even come close to being reached. The country is ruled with an iron fist and there is still no democracy. The 'eye of the world' has moved elsewhere. How things have been in Egypt since 25 January 2011 is explained using five portraits of people from various walks of life.

Childhood came easily to Ari Kinarthy, growing up as he did in a loving family environment that made him feel like time was limitless—until he was diagnosed with type-2 spinal muscular atrophy. Now, at 31, Kinarthy is a hugely accomplished music composer living with a condition that continues to weaken his muscles progressively, making him acutely aware of his own mortality.

A short, classic documentary that takes us to Calgary's famous stampede of the 1940’s. In the rolling foothills of Alberta, the colts and horses run free with wild grace and speed, until it’s round-up time. Some are destined for the Calgary Stampede, the most exciting time for cowboys and ranchers who compete in the dusty ring to win at roping, bronco-busting, bulldogging a steer, and chuck-wagon racing, risking life and limb.

Seen through the eyes of activist, farmers and journalists, Waking the Green Tiger follows an extraordinary campaign to stop a huge dam project on the Upper Yangtze river in southwestern China. Featuring astonishing archival footage never seen outside China, and interviews with a government insider and witnesses, the documentary also tell the history of Chairman Mao's campaigns to conquer nature in the name of progress. An environmental movement takes root when a new environmental law is passed, and for the first time in China's history, ordinary citizens have the democratic right to speak out and take part in government decisions. Activist test this new freedom and save a river. The movement they trigger has the potential to transform China.

We are in a crisis: While Canada consistently has one of the worst organ donor rates in the Western world, its hospitals are overcrowded with patients who desperately need an organ transplant. And within Canada, Alberta is the province with the lowest donor rates. 40 per cent of patients die while waiting for an organ.

In 1953 the Canadian government relocated Inuit families from Northern Québec to the High Arctic, promising an abundance of game and fish and assuring them they could return home after two years if things didn't work out. They would not see their ancestral lands for 30 years. Abandoned in flimsy tents, the Inuit were left to fend for themselves in the desolate settlements of Resolute Bay and Grise Fiord, where the sea was nearly always frozen and darkness reigned for months on end.

Some of life's most profound questions are tackled by ten children ranging in age from six to eleven. They give their spontaneous views on God, the beginning of life, what happens to the spirit when one dies, where one's soul goes at night, and numerous other questions about life. The magic of animation and modern camera techniques illustrate the children's imaginative ruminations and conclusions.

A retrospective look at Fogo Island, Newfoundland, four years after the original Newfoundland Project series was made. This is an assessment of the value of the programs initiated, and an illustration of what film can do to help spark new life in a fading community.

There’s something primal about the feeling of the forest floor under your paws and smelling a thousand different smells all at once. The freedom of the trail is what we long for.

Strict military rule and international sanctions kept Myanmar sealed off from the world for decades. The Vote observes residents of the bustling city of Yangon as they navigate their first democratic election in over 50 years.