Continental Divide

This feature documentary examines its own genre, which has often been called Canada's national art form. Released in the year of the NFB's 75th birthday, Shameless Propaganda is filmmaker Robert Lower's take on the boldest and most compelling propaganda effort in our history (1939-1945), in which founding NFB Commissioner John Grierson saw the documentary as a "hammer to shape society". All 500 of the films produced by the NFB until 1945 are distilled here for the essence of their message to Canadians. Using only these films and still photos from that era, Lower recreates the picture of Canada they gave us and looks in it for the Canada we know today. What he finds is by turns enlightening, entertaining, and unexpectedly disturbing.

The director goes back to her roots in Pangnirtung, amongst her family and community. It leads her to another journey: to Qipisa, the outpost camp from where they were uprooted.

Teton Gravity Research is proud to present "Beyond the Fantasy," its 29th annual ski and snowboard film. This year, we're diving headfirst into the whimsical imagination that our athletes embrace to turn improbable mental images into reality. Mountains provide the ultimate canvas for our community to evolve dreams into truth, and with no lack of adrenaline-pumping action, this film is also a celebration of the contagious camaraderie and joyous absurdities that make riding on snow a way of life. Join us as we take you beyond the fantasy.

A deceptively simple set-up: the director and his father watch a 1988 football match which the father refereed, their commentary accompanying the original television images in real time. A Bucharest derby between the country’s leading teams, Dinamo and Steaua, taking place in heavy snow, one year before the revolution that toppled Ceaușescu.

Lost Heroes is the story of Canada's forgotten comic book superheroes and their legendary creators. A ninety-minute journey to recover a forgotten part of Canada's pop culture and a national treasure few have ever heard about. This is the tale of a small country striving to create its own heroes, but finding itself constantly out muscled by better-funded and better-marketed superheroes from the media empire next door.

This feature length documentary by Jacques Godbout tackles a topic all too rarely explored in the media: terrorism in Canadian society. From Montreal to Vancouver, and Quebec City to Toronto, exasperated individuals find a new calling as self-style saviours of humanity and decide to mete out their own justice. Part reportage, part essay and part critical analysis of the phenomenon, this film includes first-hand accounts by Serge Daoust, Franco Piperno, François Schirm, Pierre Vallières and young militants from the journal Révoltes.

This film recreates the true story of Tom Sukanen, an eccentric Finnish immigrant who homesteaded in Saskatchewan in the 1920s and 1930s. Sukanen spent ten years building and moving overland a huge iron ship that was to carry him back to his native Finland. The ship never reached water.

A self-portrait short film on 16mm from a trans male perspective.

This Traveltalk series short chronicles the sights and sounds on a train ride from Veracruz to Mexico City.

A silent succession of black-and-white photographs of the city of Montreal.

Kindness, creativity, inclusivity, and a touch of magic makes the world a brighter place. Explore the story and impact of Canadian entertainer Ernie Coombs and his iconic series, Mr. Dressup, which enriched the lives of five generations.

Gil Cardinal searches for his natural family and an understanding of the circumstances that led to his becoming a foster child. An important figure in the history of Canadian Indigenous filmmaking, Gil Cardinal was born to a Métis mother but raised by a non-Indigenous foster family, and with this auto-biographical documentary he charts his efforts to find his biological mother and to understand why he was removed from her. Considered a milestone in documentary cinema, it addressed the country’s internal colonialism in a profoundly personal manner, winning a Special Jury Prize at Banff and multiple international awards.

A mother moose’s journey through nature’s eternal cycles.

A feature-length documentary which examines a deeply disturbing episode in Canadian history, when an impoverished couple was coerced by undercover law enforcement agents into carrying out a terrorist bombing. Further, viewers learn that this case is far from unique in the context of Canadian intelligence.

In this short documentary, a Musqueam elder rediscovers his Native language and traditions in the city of Vancouver, in the vicinity of which the Musqueam people have lived for thousands of years. Writing the Land captures the ever-changing nature of a modern city - the glass and steel towers cut against the sky, grass, trees and a sudden flash of birds in flight and the enduring power of language to shape perception and create memory.

A documentary of an expedition to Churchill, Manitoba to film the Northern Lights.

After their success climbing the world’s hardest offwidth, the Wide Boyz, Pete Whittaker and Tom Randall, embark on their next crack climbing mission. This time their sights are set on the thinner end of the crack climbing spectrum. Their goal is the mighty Cobra Crack in Squamish BC, considered to be the hardest finger crack in the world. First climbed by Canadian ‘rock star’ Sonnie Trotter after battling it out with Didier Berthod, the route hit the media spotlight in the film First Ascent. With no local hard cracks to train on, the Wide Boyz refit their underground training dungeon and commit to a year of torturous finger training. With only a short trip to Canada planned, the Boyz face their biggest challenge yet against the sharp granite bite of the mighty Cobra Crack!

The story of a young boy forced to spend all five years of his short life in hospital while the federal and provincial governments argued over which was responsible for his care, as well as the long struggle of Indigenous activists to force the Canadian government to enforce “Jordan’s Principle” — the promise that no First Nations children would experience inequitable access to government-funded services again.

Elliot Page brings attention to the injustices and injuries caused by environmental racism in his home province, in this urgent documentary on Indigenous and African Nova Scotian women fighting to protect their communities, their land, and their futures.

ARCTIC SUMMER is a poetic meditation on Tuktoyaktuk, an Indigenous community in the Arctic. The film captures Tuk during one of the last summers before climate change forced Tuk's coastal population to relocate to more habitable land.