O Tamaiti

Seen through the eyes of 11 year old Tino, the eldest of five children in a Samoan family, the film opens with the birth of yet another baby, and Tino must cope with the added pressures and responsibilities expected of him as the eldest. With mother and father figures who are heard but not seen, […]

Union Trouble: A Cautionary Tale

Still from UNION TROUBLE: A CAUTIONARY TALE

“Union Trouble – a cautionary tale ” is a dramatic story about a historic attempt to unionize the employees of the well-known hamburger chain McDonald’s, known all over the world for its anti-union policies. The film follows the battle undertaken by a small group of employees of one restaurant near Montreal, in an attempt to […]

Life is Beautiful

In 2014, when the young Palestinian filmmaker Mohammed Jabali was on exchange in Norway, Israel closed the borders of his native Gaza indefinitely. The Norwegian government would not accept his Palestinian passport and rejected his application for a work permit. As a result of all this, Jabali unwittingly finds himself trapped with his host family […]

A Right to Eat

With a jug of milk ringing in at over $14 in some of Northern Manitoba’s lowest income communities, it’s not difficult to imagine how grocery bills can account for up to 80% of the household budget or why diabetes rates have hit 50% in some regions. Local studies have shown that food insecurity rates in […]

Guilda: Elle est bien dans ma peau

Still from Guilda Elle Est Bien Dans Ma Peau

There doesn’t seem to be enough epithets to describe Jean Guilda: comedian, singer, costume and make-up innovator, transvestite extraordinaire. It seems the best one, however, is the simplest: artist. Elegantly talented and altogether groundbreaking, Guilda – his stage name recalling his real last name, as well as Rita Hayworth’s portrayal of Gilda, that indomitable mame […]

Gulîstan, Land of Roses

Still from Gulistan 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 […]

The Choir Boys!

The Choir Boys!

For more than 125 years, meals have been served for a large number of homeless people in the reception centre L‘accueil Bonneau in Montreal, Canada. A few years ago, a choir of around twenty men was formed from the regular clientele of the centre. Initially, the choir sang and played mainly in the streets and […]

The Troublemakers

Still from The Troublemakers

The Troublemakers follows the lives of four down-on-their-luck characters. Surrounded by the vestiges of conspicuous consumption, they struggle to survive outside of society, fashioning their own aesthetics of poverty and devising strategies to navigate a surveillance society, evading or performing for cameras everywhere. The Troublemakers is equally fact and fiction, documentary and performance, home movie and narrative […]

Breaking the Frame

Still from Breaking The Frame

BREAKING THE FRAME is a feature–length documentary portrait of the New York artist Carolee Schneemann by Canadian filmmaker Marielle Nitoslawska. A pioneer of performance and body art as well as avant-garde cinema, Schneemann has been breaking the frames of the art world for five decades, in a variety of mediums, challenging assumptions of feminism, gender, […]

Queer for Palestine

From intimate portrayal to experimental cinema, this program of queer shorts from Palestine and Lebanon examines the intersection of gender and sexual identity with the Palestinian liberation struggle. This event is part of Queer Cinema for Palestine, a collectively-curated 10-day film festival celebrating global queer realities and standing in solidarity with Palestinians. The festival will […]

Treat Me Like Your Mother

This photographic documentary uncovers the intimate experiences of four trans women from Lebanon, recounting tales spanning from pioneering Lebanese state-funded gender-affirming surgery in 1997 to vanished safe spaces today. Together, Em Abed, Jamal Abdo, Antonella, and Mama Jad present an untold history to the backdrop of what is arguably the first photographic archive of trans […]

Innocence

Award-winning and Oscar-nominated director Guy Davidi (5 BROKEN CAMERAS) focuses on his country’s military industrial-cultural complex to reveal a searing and devastating story of war, propaganda, and a society that normalizes the corruption of childhood in the service of state violence. While exposing the workings of Israel’s recruitment and training machine, Davidi deftly stitches the […]

My Real Life (Ma Vie Réelle)

Still from MY REAL LIFE (MA VIE RÉELLE)

Drugs, delinquency, dysfunctional families, abandonment, poverty: “real life” is tough for young people in Montréal-Nord. Magnus Isacsson followed four teens from the impoverished area for 18 months, capturing not only their problems but their immense energy and will to escape. At the heart of their struggle is rap: raw, sincere, potent music that speaks for […]