Discoveries from Canada World Cinema

Paul Bougon ignites social media networks and public opinion after his brief participation in a television program. Having become an instant celebrity thanks to his outspokenness, he decides to go into politics and founds his own party. With the help of his devoted entourage and at the head of the PEN (Parti de l’Écœurement National) [National Disgust Party], he wins the elections and becomes Premier. The challenges of his new career place him in front of heartbreaking choices.

Years after having her newborn child stolen from her, Sam searches a world infested with infected users from the Social Redroom website. After befriending a young girl named Bean, Sam is captured and locked in a facility dedicated to finding a cure for the Redroom Virus. Trapped and tortured, Sam tries to escape the facility before an impending update on the Redroom site hits 100% and unleashes its final phase of the attack.

A privileged, black college student with a fiance falls in love with a white musician she meets on her 21st birthday.

To pay for college, Business major Trina goes live with her unique dating website Let's Date. Let's Date becomes a huge success, though Trina soon learns that her site is being misused as a prostitution hub and shuts it down. When one of the dating users from the site turns up dead, Trina looks to her now defunct site for clues, which someone does not want her to uncover.

A shallow Broadway press agent learns he is dying just as his son by his ex-wife arrives for a visit.

A small toy company CEO gets a once in a lifetime offer to merge with a mega toy company but will need her estranged ex-business partner's signature to seal the deal. What he helps her rediscover will change both of their lives.

With "sealfies" and social media, a new tech-savvy generation of Inuit is wading into the world of activism, using humour and reason to confront aggressive animal rights vitriol and defend their traditional hunting practices. Director Alethea Arnaquq-Baril joins her fellow Inuit activists as they challenge outdated perceptions of Inuit and present themselves to the world as a modern people in dire need of a sustainable economy.

From the philosophy lectern to the director’s chair, Louis Godbout draws on fifteen years of profound contemplation to depict an ordinary "battle": fighting over a parking space. It all begins with one parking spot, a couple and a stranger. Calling the police fails to end the conflict, which instead escalates into a silent psychological warfare. A single comment from the stranger acts like a domino effect, knocking down every seemingly solid pillar of the couple’s relationship. Undercurrents run rampant throughout the night.The film employs tranquil empty shots to create an oppressive, suffocating atmosphere, and its understated dialogue leaves vast room for the audience to interpret. When intimate bonds meet the game of human nature, who is the real stranger in the end?

Beat Down is an irreverent comedy about wrestling, family and following your dreams no matter how painful that can sometimes be. Fran Whiteway (Marthe Bernard, Republic of Doyle) is eighteen and a real firecracker. More than anything, Fran dreams of becoming a professional wrestler. Her single-father Whitey (Robb Wells, Trailer Park Boys) is a former-pro, aka White Lightning, with broken dreams of his own and is dead set against Fran wrestling. Fran is determined though and when Whitey's old rival Dark Thunder (Tony Nappo, Saw II) comes to town, she runs away to join his tour. Whitey is devastated and while he tries to get his daughter back, Fran learns the ropes of the wrestling game and of life itself.

Shane Bradley, who is fixated on ideas of luck and destiny, tries to win the girl of his dreams. After their relationship falters, Shane begins to think he might be unlucky and turns to gambling as an outlet for his obsession.

A woman finds out she's pregnant and returns home when the expected father wants nothing to do with her.

Brad Stevens and Alex Prager are best friends. They are both popular high school students and key members of the football team. Brad is up for nomination to West Point, and Alex is a talented pianist who’s counting on his football skills to land him a university scholarship. But their lives are turned upside down when one day Alex admits that he is gay.

An ambitious U.S. Senator reflects back on his life after the death of a woman whom he loved and kept in contact with only through correspondence.

Things turn deadly and dangerous when a married couple invite a third lover into their bed to spice up their sex life.

Private detective Benny Cooperman is hired to keep an eye on a controversial preacher who is in hiding in a picturesque lake resort, but once he gets there Benny finds himself involved with murders, satanism, and unfriendly nature.

Elizar Perla is a recently retired cat burglar who has succumbed to the temptation of one final score. The target is David Gray, famous for his collection of art and other rarities. Soon after the job, Elizar disappears, leaving his daughter Marty (Gina Gershon) distraught. Desperate, Gray approaches Marty suggesting that her father will turn up as soon as the stolen artwork is recovered. She begrudgingly accepts the offer to help him locate the art, but all is not as it seems, as the rarest of stolen pieces has value beyond ordinary currency. Written by Peace Arch

Part of the Daughters of the Country series, this film, set in the 1850s, unfolds against the backdrop of the Hudson's Bay Company's monopoly of the fur trade. In protest, some Métis engage in trade with the Americans. Madeleine, the Métis common-law wife of a Hudson's Bay Company clerk, is torn between loyalty to her husband and loyalty to her brother, a freetrader. Even more shattering, a change in company policy destroys Madeleine's happy and secure life, forcing her to re-evaluate her identity.

Azra is worlds apart from her conservative Muslim mother. When her father suddenly dies on a trip home to Pakistan, Azra finds herself on a Bollywood-inspired journey through memories, both real and imagined; from her mother’s youth in Karachi to her own coming- of-age in rural Canada.

Alone, and targeted on an isolated farm, 12 year old Henry finds himself at the center of a maelstrom of terror, and a dark family legacy, when his secretive grandfather dies suddenly in the night.

From a very young age, Herby discovered the world of car racing. Even though he worked hard to buy his first car, and despite his undeniable talent, the social class he came from did not open the necessary doors to climb the ladder. Carried by his childhood dream, by the smell of fuel and asphalt, he gravitates all his life around the racing world. Among other things, he works as a mechanic for wealthy drivers and tries, as best he can, to continue to make his mark on the circuit, until perhaps reaching his ultimate goal, driving on the Nascar circuit.

Zoe is abducted by a suburban single mother named Alina, who just so happens to be a deranged yet altruistic serial killer. As Zoe battles for survival, she finds herself asking what in her life is even worth fighting for.

The owner of a café where everyone falls in love could lose everything when a major celeb proposes and gets dumped, so she vows to get him and his would-be fiancée back together, only to wind up falling in love with him herself.

A gentle, pacifist drifter faces a town's patriotic wrath on the World War II era home front in this original drama. Ten-year-old Pug and her lonely mother Ruby have their lives shaken by a conscientious objector named Tom who brings their loneliness to an end but also stirs up bitter feelings among their neighbors.

A queer couple moves into an abandoned family house during the first year of the pandemic. Something in the house, neither dead nor alive, helps them transition to a new era of self-awareness.

Verlin is 9 years old and does not talk, nor does he even seem to hear. Henry, a child-like adult, befriends Verlin and pulls him from his shell. Verlin's mother mistrusts Henry, who she feels is dangerous.

Three adolescent boys become captivated by the queer nightlife over summer break, but a missing person pulls them back into the reality they tried to leave behind.

Luna is a former dancer, who left that dream behind for a grounded life managing her family’s construction business and gets the opportunity to transform a gymnasium into a studio for aerials. As she sneaks a moment to try dancing in the silks, she is surreptitiously discovered by Bennet, a professional aerialist, who has returned home from performing around the world. Bennet is none too pleased to walk in to find his contractor messing around on the silks, but when his partner for an upcoming show drops out, he soon recruits Luna to perform with him. As the hard work of this dynamic sport and the joys of Luna returning to her roots as a dancer bring them closer together, will their relationship crash or will they find a way to reach new heights?

A matriarch is poisoned during a family wedding reception and Aurora Teagarden vows to get to the bottom of the crime, especially when her mother, a friend of the dead woman, stands to inherit the bulk of the massive estate. 11th installment in Aurora Teagarden Mysteries.

When down-to-earth Alex says yes to her boyfriend's marriage proposal, she has no idea that her future-in-laws are none other than Mr. and Mrs. Claus.

In an alternate world where hearts are made of objects and suppressing emotions is self-care, a lonely woman rips out her own heart for the man she loves, only to discover that he has run away with it.

The true story of the formation of the Lonesome Dove Church in Texas.

On August 16, 2013, the Supreme Court mandated the CIA to declassify files that had been kept secret for the past 75 years. Visual records of documented paranormal events were released to the public. The following incident took place in Gracefield, Quebec.

When a neurotic city transplant inherits his late father's rural farm, he must survive his unhinged neighbor's psychological warfare while discovering that sometimes your worst enemy might just save your life.

After being released from prison, Billy Skinner returns to his low-income neighbourhood feeling like a fish out of water; the area has changed dramatically, and what was once a predominantly white neighbourhood is now mostly occupied by refugee families.

Evangeline (Kat de Lieva) has left her sheltered upbringing to reinvent herself in college. As she begins to break out of her shell, she attracts the attention of a sociopathic fraternity leader (Richard Harmon) and his two cohorts. “Beaten and left for dead, Evangeline finds herself trapped in a supernatural nightmare, where she is caught between salvation and vengeance. But to save herself, Evangeline discovers she must make the most horrifying choice of all…

Every year, Megan, an ambitious young woman uses the weeks leading up to Christmas to become the ultimate holiday freelance assistant for hire, helping with any Christmas related tasks for extra income. But when the opportunity arrives to save a Christmas party and dazzle her crush, she must choose between the man of her aspirations and Mr. Right.

On an island in the Pacific Northwest, a junkie photojournalist's disturbing future is revealed to him through the images he shoots.

Pip, a street kid just turning 18, receives his grandfather's World War II-era memoirs and discovers parallels to his own life.

A reporter tracing the effect of the death penalty stumbles across a murder mystery and a potentially innocent man set for execution.

Marie Antoinette, Archduchess of Austria and a very young girl, marries King Louis-Auguste, Dauphine of France. This historical drama tells the tragic tale of a young woman who, in the beginning started out with task, that ended with great sadness and sorrow.

A Middle-Eastern medical school student, new to Montreal, puts his relationship with his father at risk when he forfeits his education after being forever changed by two young women who help him see his destiny.

Zoey Hathaway has been working towards her lifelong goal of being a pilot for years, but everything is thrown off-course when she unexpectedly inherits a reindeer farm, along with the dangerously handsome ranch hand Alec Wynn. Now buried in taking care of reindeer and all the Christmas responsibilities, Zoey thinks life has delivered her a strange and cumbersome blow, and she isn’t sure about Alec, who has his own ideas how best to run things. Alec, who has never had many people have faith in him, opens up when Zoey invests trust in him, and the two find themselves falling for each other. Could they both find happiness in the most unlikely of circumstances right before Christmas?

Under hypnosis, a mental patient admits to several recent murders. He also offers a strange defense when he claims that he is the reincarnation of a 19th century man who was wrongly executed.

A lonely, recluse sculptor must confront his inner turmoil and reckon with his romantic desires when his statue comes to life.

Rahul Seth is a dashing young millionaire who believes he is "western" enough to rebel against his mother and grandmother. They are not too keen about his Caucasian girlfriend Kimberly who, to make matters worse, is a pop star. Before you can say "karmic intervention," Kimberly dies in a freak accident and Rahul is devastated. Instead of allowing him to mourn in peace, Rahul's mother sees the opportunity she's been waiting for. She threatens to call off his sister's wedding unless he finds himself a "nice Indian girl." Rahul enlists the services of Sue, a fiercely independent escort whom he believes to be Hispanic, and therefore not "married" to the conventions taught to young Indian women. With a wink in her eye, Sue accepts the deal to pose as his Indian bride-to-be. She needs the money and having never been a fan of the typical Indian male, she feels her heart is safe. The charade begins....

This incisive, urgent documentary examines the history of anti-Black racism in hockey, from the segregated leagues of the 19th century to today’s NHL, where Black athletes continue to struggle against bigotry.

Berthierville, 1970. From a modest background, a young Quebecer with a passion for mechanics and speed decides to risk everything he owns, including the future of his young family, to try and make a name for himself in the highly selective world of top-level motor racing, a sport normally reserved for wealthy elites, relying solely on his raw and extraordinary talent. His name: Gilles Villeneuve.

A woman escapes from an abusive relationship by moving back to her hometown, only to discover she has a long-lost twin sister who may be a murderer.

A struggling actress and an aspiring playwright pour all of their creative energy into the only paying work they can find: role-playing demonstrations for corporate training seminars. When they book the biggest gig of their careers at a hotel conference, they commence work on their most ambitious production to date.

The Jennings family couldn't be more suburban but when Uncle Frank crashes their weekly Sunday dinner, murder turns up on the menu.

A scientist working on an energy project discovers his family have undergone strange changes in their personalities, while a series of natural disasters are happening across the globe. He realises that his work has accidentally pushed the planet forward in time seven seconds - and the loss of those few moments has had devastating effects on the world and the human race.

A writer seeks the identity of the person who helps grant wishes that are placed upon the angel tree, and in the process, reconnects with her childhood friend.

Aubri Callahan is an aspiring comedian and ghost writer for Bella Delmonico, acclaimed stand up comic and owner of the Vista Theater. Performing at the Vista is a key step on the way to stardom and despite her natural talent, Aubri patiently waits for her time to shine, writing jokes for Bella in the shadows of the comedic giants that came before her. When The Vista Theater Variety Show lands in Aubri’s lap she must plan the whole event and find a headliner all before Christmas eve, just three weeks away.

A mother and daughter are in a witness protection program and relocated to a quiet remote town . The criminal in prison, who they are linked to by the conviction, arranges a ruthless man to hunt them down and kill them.

Ellie, a serial 'ghoster' on dating apps, is told by a fortune teller that she must resolve her past and make amends with all those she ghosted before Christmas, or she is destined to never find true love! Over the course of one week, she takes it upon herself to track down all the men she ghosted before the stroke of midnight on Christmas Eve and discovers love in the process.

After their father's death two sisters reunite at their childhood home to uncover forgotten secrets and rip open old wounds.

A modern, gothic tale of crime and redemption about an aging police officer from a small Ontario Mennonite town who hides a violent past until a local murder upsets the calm of his newly reformed life.

A comedy film made for 48-hour Flick Fest

A young man struggles to correct his life after the death of his father.