Discoveries from Canada World Cinema

A nurse working in a center for the disabled is confronted to his principles when he's asked to accomplish a particular task.

A story told by those who knew Boris Nemtsov at different times: when he was a young scientist and took his first steps in politics; when he held high government offices and was considered Boris Yeltsin's heir apparent; when he led Russia's democratic opposition to Vladimir Putin.

Lines is a story about a woman's trip to the dermatologist's office to remove a mole only to find herself accosted by her doctor about Botulinum Toxin and lip fillers. In today's society the pressure of ageism is overwhelming and unfair. The forty-year-old woman in this film, Amelia Jamison, enters the doctor's office feeling beautiful and fulfilled and leaves feeling old and vulnerable. The short ends with an encounter on the boardwalk with a naturally beautiful woman that brings her perspective back to where it should be. My goal with this short is to inspire confidence in the beauty of who we are naturally. To not let the pressures of today's youth obsessed society manipulate us into unnatural external augmentation.

Geneviève Saint-Louis, a bachelor and neurotic careerist, refuses any form of engagement. Her aunt Aline, a former cabaret singer, arrives at her home with the ulterior aim of avoiding placement in a reception center.

Filmed in 1999, Universal Groove explores 90s rave culture through eight diverse characters seeking escape and self-discovery amidst drugs and dance, offering a nostalgic journey into the underground party scene of the era.

A famous comedian makes a confession to a closeted stranger, two bickering parents come home to a surprising discovery, and an art gallery attendant gets a short glimpse into the life of a young woman she once briefly knew. Enter a new world with six enlightening tales of private revelations, lingering secrets and those fleeting moments where the burdens of everyday life are temporarily lifted.

Former hockey player Charlie partners with ex-teammate Julius to rob the sport’s biggest star and Charlie’s best friend JP.

As war ravages the Human Kingdom, a daring Poet must lead three mystical heroes deep into the Faerie State to find a lost prince, return him to the throne and restore the peace.

An offbeat, irreverent musical documentary that tells the story of a group of Jewish songwriters, including Irving Berlin, Mel Tormé, Jay Livingston, Ray Evans, Gloria Shayne Baker and Johnny Marks, who wrote the soundtrack to Christianity’s most musical holiday. It’s an amazing tale of immigrant outsiders who became irreplaceable players in pop culture’s mainstream – a generation of songwriters who found in Christmas the perfect holiday in which to imagine a better world, and for at least one day a year, make us believe.

Elliott was a loser who robbed the bank only to land in jail. In prison, he encounters homosexuality as every inmate wants to turn Elliott into a mate!

Policeman Stevie Grimes never lost his trust in the police force but has been suspended a few months for accidentally shooting and killing a young boy. Because of lack of evidence in court and with some help from his former partner, Stevie soon finds himself working as a policeman again. When Stevie returns to the police force he is bound to a desk job. Stevie misses the action of the streets and asks his former partner who has been promoted to lieutenant, if there are any interesting assignments available, the lieutenant knows just a case that Stevie can work out perfectly. The lieutenant and Stevie do however share a dark secret... It wasn't Stevie that shot the young boy but somebody very important within the police force, Stevie took the fall out of loyalty.

A feature-length documentary about the famous Quebec Winter Carnival beauty pageant of 1975. Each year, seven beauties are carefully selected: a queen and six duchesses. A dream that many a young girl has cherished and lived... or experienced firsthand. They will have entered a competition marked by several stages. A tailor-made demeanor will have been demanded of them, one that has taken many hours to shape. The overall impression the viewer gets is captivating: the backstage of the Carnival is opened to an honest, yet wonderfully biased, camera.

In this French Canadian film, the lives of teenagers are examined in fantasy sequences and through the use of documentary interviews. Prompted by the filmmaker, nine teenagers individually act out their secret dreams and, between times, talk about their world as they see it. The fantasy sequences make creative use of animation, unusual film-development techniques, and stills. Babette conceives of herself as an abbess defending her fortress, a convent; Michelle is transported in a dream of love where all time ceases; Philippe is the revolutionary, defeating all the institutions that plague him, and so on, through all their fantasies. All the actual preoccupations of youth are raised: authority, drugs, social conflict, sex. Jutra's style in "Wow" exhibits his innovative approach to storytelling and filmmaking, showcasing his talents as a director during that period. With English subtitles.

Koji Yamamura's allegory the immutability of time, love and devotion, and the unbreakable nature of the parent-child bond, into interlacing story.

A documentary show host finds himself being forced to tackle an old controversial viral video by the network he works for. If he doesn't comply he will lose his job, the jobs of his team and his show. The host and his team are placed in a high stress position that leaves the host diving into the video in hopes of exposing its falsehood and humiliating the network.

Meet the fascinating felines and the people who pamper then in this whimsical look at the ins and outs of Canada's competitive cat show circuit, where the claws come out when a Turkish Angora and an adorable fluffy red Persian face off to take home the national award for Best in Show.

Delilah Miller is looking for an anchor in her life. She starts a romance with rock musician Ryland Yale, but soon it shows he can not be such an anchor - he's possessive, undependable and even a heroin addict.

Ted is an entrepreneur whose hopes of selling 10,000 automatized ashtrays are scattered away after his buyer died. The story revolves around dozen of people whose lives are intertwined around Ted's Sisyphean attempts to return the money of a loan shark whose services he had to seek for.

A man returns to his childhood home after a nervous breakdown to be taken care of by his younger brother.

At the turn of the century, Rose-Aimée, the hard working wife of photographer J.A. Martin, decides to leave her children with an aunt to go with him on his annual tour of the Québec countryside. She hopes the intimacy will rekindle their marriage.

Set in a cyber-noir future, two brothers come under investigation by a rogue inspector after stealing a highly valuable artificial intelligence, which proves to be much more advanced than they had anticipated.

A young police officer goes through Abitibi to take a train with a young convict who escaped from her orphanage.

A documentary covering the life and death of Jamaican reggae musician and cultural icon Peter Tosh. Drawn both from Tosh's "Red X" series of autobiographical tapes that he was recording at the time of his murder and from interviews with other figures in his life.

A woman desperately wants to cry following a painful breakup. But her AI companion won't let her.

An elderly woman naps and has seven erotic dreams. Each dream sounds the same. "Dreamers" are Craig Bartlett, Alison Snowden and David Fine, Janet Perlman, Sara Petty, Stoyan Dukov, Paul Driessen and Marv Newland. Directed by Marv Newland.

Robin takes us back to that glorious time when she was seven years old and shows us how it defined her for the rest of her life.

For the first time ever, Mary Jo Buttafuoco tells her story in her own words. In May 1992, outside her Long Island home, Mary Jo was shot in the head by 17-year-old Amy Fisher — the mistress of her husband, Joey Buttafuoco.

A young cockfighter and sports memorabilia reseller prepares for the unexpected release of his incarcerated father.

A young father routinely checks his daughter's room for mysterious noises, unaware of what he'll find on this particular night.

Poetry and cinema merge as 11 filmmakers bring to life 21 poems by Québécois poets.

This hilarious short animation offers over 40 safety tips for homes with infants and young children. The film's hero is a very earnest, somewhat pompous, but endearing dog called Wally. A "professional" in home safety, Wally is assigned to a house with an infant whose parents have little safety consciousness. Accidents and near-accidents succeed each other with lightning speed, constantly putting Wally to the test.

Stars, hide your fires; let not light see my black and deep desires. Nor any truck.

Short film produced by the Bell Telephone Company to encourage the effective use of their phones.

Recording of a tense discussion between three people around the question of "revolution". Steve Ben Israel (member of the Living Theatre), James Cellan (BBC director) and David Autie (sculptor) confront each other in a debate that provoked a strong political and radical awareness among the students of the Royal College of Art in London. The screening of the document led to the return to school of five students who had been unjustly expelled by the school administration.

Julian has agreed to help Henry make his first film--but, on the day of shooting, Julian shows up having taken four tabs of LSD. Across the streets of Toronto, the two friends battle for control of the frame and struggle towards the meanings of art and communication.

Joe is a twenty-something gay man who decides to film people he meets on the street with a camera given to him by his boyfriend.

A vlogger with an aspiration to conquer a difficult hike encounters a dark secret after a mysterious man offers him help...

A transsexual becomes a star of Paris and lives a crazy love story with the lover of a friend. But the young man comes to his senses and his bourgeois upbringing. A victim of prejudice, Vicky has no choice but to kill herself.

This is the story about a boy not like the others that dreams about finding his place in the world.

A criminal is distracted by memories of his past, memories that are bad, of something that happened, in his past.

When Gérard finds a dead raccoon in his front yard, the old man becomes strangely distressed, shaken by thoughts of his own demise. Jocelyne watches the despair of her husband grow along with his obsession with the animal’s body, and his anguish takes root in her own mind. After a night of torment, they decide to go and bury the raccoon on the land where their house once stood in Joutel, a former mining town deserted since 1998. When they get there, the boreal forest is creeping in on the ruins of her former house, plunging Jocelyne into a deep nostalgia. Here, after a morbid picnic marking the raccoon’s burial, the couple meets a mystical being who leads them to make peace with their inner demons.

Complex, short animation film that divides the screen into eight small windows. To the music of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons and with appropriate colours, seasonal stories are told in the small frames. Every now and then, the isolated events cross their borders and the scenes start interacting.

'Therapy Below Zero', is a riveting new documentary filmed in Newfoundland and Labrador. Audiences are plunged into the icy depths of a revolutionary treatment that's transforming lives - cold water therapy.

Photos of Cape Breton landscapes are a google search away, my friends and family are a phone call away, I could probably get a decent donair just about anywhere. If all these things that make my home "home" are so easily accessible, why do I find it so hard to leave? "home(sick)bound" attempts to break that down.

Three kids in a low-income neighborhood find friendship and community in an unlikely place.

Guided by the spirit of “The Cuadecuc Manifesto” (coined by co-director Evan Johnson and inspired by Pere Portabella’s 1970 experimental cult documentary, Cuadecuc, vampir), Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton is a strange, stirring behind-the-scenes look at Paul Gross’s new feature, Hyena Road. Shot on location at CFB Shilo near Brandon, Manitoba, and in Aqaba, Jordan, the film mixes deep contrast black-and-white expressionism with wry and raw western revisionism reminiscent of Sam Peckinpah, as it summons unwieldy, psychedelic energy from the main event. [TIFF]

In Saigon, family culture carries on as it has for centuries, even when blood ties are broken. Through a mosaic of intimate portraits, Má Sài Gòn explores humanity’s universal desire for love, acceptance, connection and belonging through an LGBTQ+ lens. The film is a love letter – a bittersweet ode to a comforting yet disturbing mother, to a city that is as liberating as it is oppressive.

Canadas contemporary dance group La La La Human Steps performs Édouard Lock's "Human Sex" .

CORVUS follows a weary yet extraordinary police detective as he pieces together a young woman's murder. The crime reveals itself in a series of moments that allow the detective to see past the facts, and into the story with a strange sense of familiarity.

Known for her intimate films, director Kim O’Bomsawin (Call Me Human) invites viewers into the lives of Indigenous youth in this absorbing new documentary. Shot over six years, the film brings us the moving stories, dreams, and experiences of three groups of children and teens from different Indigenous nations: Atikamekw, Eeyou Cree, and Innu. In following these young people through the formative years of their childhood and right through their high school years, we witness their daily lives, their ideas, and aspirations for themselves and their communities, as well as some of the challenges they face.

The dead and the skeletons, coming out of the ground, indulge in playful dance to the music of Camille Saint-Saëns, and rejoice in the terror that they inspire.

Based on the bestselling book, this urgent feature documentary from celebrated director Michelle Latimer will take viewers on a journey into the mind of one of the world’s foremost Indigenous intellectuals, and one of our greatest storytellers: Thomas King.

Michel Dumont is charged, judged and sentenced for a rape he denies ever having committed. While he serves his time in prison, Solange, who he fell in love with during his trial, embarks on the colossal task of proving his innocence and having the court rehabilitate him.

A man is struggling to say goodbye to someone dear to him.

Marlene is a film inspired by Marlene Truscott, a housewife who fought to exonerate her husband from a crime he didn't commit. Marlene became involved in the fight for justice at a young age, when Steven was arrested at 14 and sentenced to be hung. When Steven was released from prison ten years later, she fell in love with him. Marlene's story is a story of hiding, living under an assumed name and protecting her children. He was free, but now she was in prison. Through it all Marlene was determined that Steven would get justice, that they would find light in the darkness, a darkness that buried the truth. Surrounded by boxes of files Marlene found a world of lies, cover-ups, and secrets.

Ashley Smith was a troubled 19-year-old when she choked herself to death at Ontario's Grand Valley Institution for Women. Her death made national headlines and led to a scathing report by Canada’s federal prison ombudsman. Incarceration for Ashley began at a youth detention centre in New Brunswick. Her crime: she had tossed crabapples at a mailman. Her one-month sentence stretched to almost four years, served in five provinces. With the prison videotapes and exclusive access to Smith’s parents, along with a fellow inmate, this documentary exposes a system that fails the many Ashley Smiths still incarcerated in Canadian institutions.

Queer writer, Jonah, is forced to confront his insecurities when he ends up on a date with his former English professor. Through a night of laughter and vulnerability, they unpack what it means to be a gay man in search of real connection.