Voices That Heal

Colebrook Blackwood Reconciliation Park is where the Colebrook Training Home once stood. It is now a permanent memorial for the Aboriginal children of the “Stolen Generation” and their families.

Every year since 2011, a unique beauty contest has been taking place in Haifa. The contestants are female survivors of the Holocaust. In the midst of this flashy spectacle, their personal traumas remain as deep as ever. There are many things about this contest that are controversial: it is organized by the right Zionist organization, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, and the dubious contest itself rises the public indignation of various speakers, including other survivors.

In the Plains Cree language, “pîtoteyihtam” means “one who thinks differently”. Among various indigenous peoples, difference is far from being perceived as a handicap and is rather seen as a strength from which the whole community can benefit. In the era of reconciliation, Indigenous peoples are reclaiming their traditional knowledge and philosophies. Through intimate encounters with several people from the communities of Pessamit (Innu) and Manawan (Atikamekw), the film reveals how neurodiversity is perceived and experienced there, and how we can rethink the accompaniment of these young people by reconnecting with traditional philosophies of First Nations.

In this layered short film, filmmaker Janine Windolph takes her young sons fishing with their kokum (grandmother), a residential school survivor who retains a deep knowledge and memory of the land. The act of reconnecting with their homeland is a cultural and familial healing journey for the boys, who are growing up in the city. It’s also a powerful form of resistance for the women.

Yellowtail is the story of a young Native American cowboy searching for meaning as his chaotic lifestyle begins to wear on him both physically and mentally. To find his purpose the young man has to reflect on his upbringing as a native to become the spiritually connect man he was meant to be.

Moeder & Grunberg

A trip through the diversity of black and native Peruvian music.

Disrupt, reject, destroy, avoid: At the interrupted rhythm of the broken photographs that a granddaughter has rescued from her grandfather’s hands, the last piece reconstructs the memory of an older man who has decided to leave behind his life impulses to surrender to sleep and calm. An essay on the act of joining our memories, the illusion of remembering and the freedom to forget.

After a routine partial hip replacement operation leaves his mother in a coma with permanent brain damage, what starts as a son's video diary becomes a citizen's investigation into the future of American health care.

By retracing the mixed heritage of First Nations peoples and Quebecers, painting a modern portrait, and sketching a human geography, this film helps us (re)discover the beauty and strength of our common territory: the Americas.

Mr. Greene recollects Navajo history through interviews with ancient tribesmen and reports on contemporary conditions, with emphasis on the progress being made at Rough Rock School in contrast with a BIA boarding school in Utah. Rough Rock is the "experimental" institution set up to give the Native Americans direct control of the process by which their children can be educated to function, productively and with a sense of identification, in two totally different worlds.

After years of suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, six US veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan travel to Peru on a quest for healing. With the help and guidance of three brothers who are traditional healers, they take ayahuasca and other plant medicines during a 10-day retreat in the Amazon rainforest.

Ang Babae sa Likod ng Mambabatok unravels the multiple layers of the almost mythological figure-living legend, Fang Od, a 92 year old woman who has been called the ‘Last [Traditional] Tattoo Artist of Kalinga.’ The first layer of the story is the one she is most famous for-being a tattoo artist. At her eyes, she continues to exhibit sharpness and precision in the very demanding art and skill of tattooing. The second layer shows her many stories as woman who has reached the age of looking back. She regales us with stories of her many suitors, of her youth, the dancing and the feasts. She also looks back with not just a tinge of regret that she never married nor had children of her own. Her body covered in tattoos is a landscape on its own mirroring the map of a woman who has chosen wittingly or unwittingly a road diverging from convention and in the process became a culture-bearer.

A story of a mother and her son and a race against a tortoise where you always lose.

A moving portrait of actress Tantoo Cardinal, travelling through time and across the many roles she’s played, capturing her strength and her impact—and how she shattered the glass ceiling and survived.

Steeped in the long oral tradition of Waorani storytelling, Gange Yeti shares her own coming-of-age story as a young Waorani woman living deep within the Amazon rainforest. Following Gange and her community for over 11 years, the film captures her transition from a quiet teenager into a confident young mother at a critical turning point for her culture and rainforest. As the granddaughter of one of the last Waorani elders that lived in complete isolation before outside contact, Gange is determined to capture her grandmother’s unique experience while she still can -- balancing school, motherhood, and tradition along the way.

This autobiographical film documents an attempt at healing the trauma of touch between mother and child, as the filmmaker and their mother talk openly for the first time about the intergenerational trauma and abuse within their lives. Present day phone conversations are juxtaposed with archival VHS footage, creating a connection between the past and a re-write for the future.

This short experimental documentary challenges stereotypes about Indigenous people in the workplace. Featuring portraits set to a powerful poem by Mohawk writer Janet Marie Rogers, the film urges viewers to go beyond their preconceived notions. As I Am is a celebration of Indigenous people's pride in their work and culture.

Euller Miller is a young native Brazilian of kaiwá ethnicity who leaves his small village just outside of Dourados (MS) to study dentistry at a public university in the crowded capital city of the state of Paraná. The film follows the complex transition between two very different worlds and the search for new horizons without abandoning his indigenous roots.

The Rastreadoras de El Fuerte are a group of mothers of disappeared persons in northern Sinaloa who, in the absence of the authorities, twice a week go out with picks and shovels in search of the remains of their children; a testimony of the abandonment of the State, the aggressions of the drug traffickers, the indifference of society and the pain, but also of the strength and courage that keep these women together, and of their empowerment to mobilize society in community organization.