Canada

Synopsis
Featuring stunning footage from seven winters in the Arctic, People of a Feather takes you through time into the world of the Inuit on the Belcher Islands in Canada’s Hudson Bay. Connecting past, present and future is a unique relationship with the eider duck. Eider down, the warmest feather in the world, allows both Inuit and bird to survive harsh Arctic winters. Traditional life is juxtaposed with modern challenges as both Inuit and eiders confront changing sea ice and ocean currents disrupted by the massive hydroelectric dams powering New York and eastern North America. Inspired by Inuit ingenuity and the technology of a simple feather, the film is a call to action to implement energy solutions that work with nature.—First Run FeaturesRead More »

PLOT: This animated short by Norman McLaren features synchronization of image and sound in the truest sense of the word. To make this film, McLaren employed novel optical techniques to compose the piano rhythms of the sound track, which he then moved, in multicolor, onto the picture area of the screen so that, in effect, you see what you hear.Read More »

In March 2002, a state TV signal in China gets hacked by members of the banned spiritual group Falun Gong. Their goal is to counter the government narrative about their practice. In the aftermath, police raids sweep Changchun City, and comic book illustrator Daxiong (Justice League, Star Wars), a Falun Gong practitioner, is forced to flee. He arrives in North America, blaming the hijacking for worsening an already violent repression. But his views are challenged when he meets the lone surviving participant to have escaped China, now living in Seoul, South Korea.Read More »

Camilo is a quiet man who works for a cleaning company in Montreal. He used to run a successful restaurant called Le Coyote, but he has been struggling to find work in the culinary field since his establishment went out of business. An old friend offers him a position as a chef in the suburbs. Just when it looks like life will cut him a break, his estranged daughter lands on his doorstep, announcing that she has a grandson, Zachary.Read More »

In October of 1991, an unspeakable event rocks a small town in Quebec, haunting a family who tries to hide their dark secret. Thirty years later these secrets resurface, sending the family on an unstoppable pursuit of reconciliation.Read More »

Set during a smallpox epidemic in the village of Gimli, Manitoba near the turn of the century, TALES FROM THE GIMLI HOSPITAL (1988) is a dreamlike, elliptical film which explores the jealousy and madness instilled in two men who share a hospital room “in a Gimli we no longer know.” Zeitgeist Films and Films We Like in Canada present a brand new 4K remastering of TALES FROM THE GIMLI HOSPITAL REDUX by Guy Maddin, which had its world premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). The new 4K digital remaster was supervised by Guy Maddin using original printing elements provided by the TIFF Cinematheque Library and includes the replacement of a long-lost scene. Maddin’s highly acclaimed first feature, released in 1988, is now regarded as one of the true cult hits on the midnight movie circuit.Read More »

Quote:
The voice-over text, written and performed by France Daigle, creates three images which recur alternately throughout the film: a bird flapping its wings tirelessly; a figure (man, boy?) who sits on a hay bale, watching the city below; and a woman in a library who reads only what others have left behind. The filmed images are predominantly houses: houses seen in passing, along the horizontal; houses reflecting sky and trees in their windows; houses partially hidden by trees or the shadows they cast; houses and office towers simultaneously pictured in stages of demolition and construction.Read More »

James and Em Foster are enjoying an all-inclusive beach vacation in the fictional island of La Tolqa, when a fatal accident exposes the resort’s perverse subculture of hedonistic tourism, reckless violence and surreal horrors.Read More »

Quote:
The term “blood quantum” refers to a colonial blood measurement system that is used to determine an individual’s Indigenous status, and is criticized as a tool of control and erasure of Indigenous peoples. The words take on even more provocative implications as the title of Jeff Barnaby’s sophomore feature, which grimly depicts an apocalyptic scenario where in an isolated “Mi’gmaq” community discover they are the only humans immune to a zombie plague. As the citizens of surrounding cities flee to the “Mi’gmaq” reserve in search of refuge from the outbreak, the community must reckon with whether to let the outsiders in – and thus risk not just the extinction of their tribe but of humanity, period. The severe and scathing portrait of post-colonial Indigenous life and culture that Barnaby previously captured in the acclaimed Rhymes for Young Ghouls here deftly collides with the iconography and violent hyperbole typical of the zombie genre.Read More »