The Apology
THE APOLOGY follows the personal journeys of three former “comfort women” who were among the 200,000 girls and young women kidnapped and forced into military sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. Some 70 years after their imprisonment in so-called “comfort stations”, the three “grandmothers”—Grandma Gil in South Korea, Grandma Cao in China, and Grandma Adela […]
The Violence of a Civilization Without Secrets
Filmmakers Adam and Zack Khalil (Ojibway), in collaboration with artist Jackson Polys, investigate the recent court case that decided the fate of the remains of a prehistoric Paleoamerican man found in Kennewick, Washington State in 1996. The case pitted the Umatilla people and other tribes, who wanted to provide a burial to the “Ancient One,” […]
Three Thousand
“My father was born in a spring igloo—half snow, half skin. I was born in a hospital, with jaundice and two teeth.” With quiet command, the young Inuk artist Asinnajaq plunges us into a sublime imaginary universe—12 minutes of luminescent, archive-inspired cinema that recast the past, present and future of Inuit in a radiant new […]
More than a Word
MORE THAN A WORD analyzes the Washington football team and their use of the derogatory term R*dskins. Using interviews from both those in favour of changing the name and those against, the film presents a deeper analysis of the many issues surrounding the Washington team name. The documentary also examines the history of Native American […]
Ada for Mayor (Alcaldessa)
Ada Colau, a well known activist against evictions in Spain, decides to run for Mayor of Barcelona. Surrounded by a team with little experience in institutional politics, Ada speaks about her doubts and discoveries during this vertiginous journey. The film combines the enthusiastic construction of a new political movement with the inner struggle of someone […]
Memories of a Penitent Heart
Combining a wealth of recently discovered home movies, video, and written documents with artfully shot contemporary interviews and vérité footage, MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART is a documentary that cracks open a Pandora’s box of unresolved family drama. Originating from filmmaker Cecilia Aldarondo’s suspicion that there was something ugly in her family’s past, the film […]
Complicit
Complicit was filmed over 3 years in China’s electronics zones Shenzhen and Guangzhou with lush cinematography and unique access, the film takes the audience on an 8000-mile journey to the world’s electronics factory floors, revealing the situations under which China’s youth population has shifted by the millions in search of a better life. COMPLICIT gathers […]
Defiant Lives
Featuring exclusive interviews with elders (some now deceased) who’ve led the movement over the past five decades, the film weaves together never-before-seen archival footage with the often-confronting personal stories of disabled men and women as they moved from being warehoused in institutions to fighting for independence and control over their lives. Once freed from their […]
Waru
Nine female Māori filmmakers contributed eight ten minute vignettes, presented as a continuous shot in real time, that unfold around the tangi (funeral) of a small boy (Waru) who died at the hands of his caregiver. The vignettes are all subtly interlinked and each follow one of eight female Māori lead characters during the same […]
Ohero:kon – Under the Husk
UNDER THE HUSK follows two Mohawk girls on their journey to become Mohawk women. Friends since childhood, Kaienkwinehtha and Kasennakohe are members of the traditional community of Akwesasne on the U.S./Canada border. Together, they undertake a four-year rite of passage for adolescents, called Oheró:kon, or “under the husk.” The ceremony had been nearly extinct, a […]
Sacred Water: Standing Rock Part 1
The people of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation of North and South Dakota are fighting to stop a pipeline from being built on their ancestral homeland. The Dakota Access Pipeline would snake its way across four states, bisecting sacred Indigenous sites and burial grounds along the route. The tribe fears that a leak could contaminate […]
We Can’t Make the Same Mistake Twice
In 2007, the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada and the Assembly of First Nations filed a complaint against Indian Affairs and Northern Development Canada, accusing it of discrimination. They argued that the family and child support services made available to First Nations children on reserves and in Yukon were underfunded and […]
Gulîstan, Land of Roses
They stand at the forefront of the fight for freedom in the Middle East. These young women belong to the armed wing of the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which is also an active guerrilla movement. From their camp hidden away in the mountains, the women lead a nomadic life, undergoing ideological and practical training […]
100 Short Stories
With his filmmakers typical irreverence, Livingston interweaves tales of predatory capitalism, eco-activism, and contemporary life in Atlantic Canada, engaging in an offbeat and often humorous exploration of energy policy, governance, and regional culture, in a diaristic collage of entrepreneurship and environmentalism. The film presents a first-person account of a years long struggle to develop Black […]
ôtênaw
ôtênaw is a film documenting the oral storytelling of Dwayne Donald, an educator from Treaty 6, Edmonton, Canada. Drawing from nêhiyawak philosophies, he speaks about the multilayered histories of Indigenous peoples’ presence both within and around amiskwacîwâskahikan, or what has come to be known as the city of Edmonton.
The Caretakers
Exploring the fragile dynamic between settler activists and Indigenous land and water defenders, THE CARETAKERS articulates the effects of colonization on the environment and Indigenous peoples. Looking in particular at the anti-Kinder Morgan blockade that took place in the fall of 2014 within the Burnaby Mountain Conservation Area, on the unceded traditional territories of the […]