Alias Grace

Director Mary Harron
Year 2017
Run Time 267min
Genre Drama
Inspired by true events, Alias Grace tells the story of Grace Marks (Gadon), a housekeeper who is convicted of the murders of her employers in the mid-1800s. When a psychiatrist, Dr. Jordan (Holcroft), is brought in to make a report on her condition, Grace is given the opportunity to tell her side of the story and plead her innocence. As a high profile case with the general public waiting on the outcome of their sessions, Dr. Jordan attempts increasingly radical procedures, while at the same time slowly developing romantic feelings for Grace. As their relationship reaches a head, new truths come to light and both of their lives are changed forever.

Adapted from Margaret Atwood’s Giller prize-winning novel of the same name, this miniseries has received universal acclaim, earning 5 Canadian Screen Awards including best limited series.

Director

Mary Harron

Harron is an award-winning Canadian filmmaker and screenwriter, and former entertainment critic. She gained recognition for her role in writing and directing several independent films, including writing I Shot Andy Warhol, and co-writing as well as directing American Psycho. Her most recent film, Daliland starring Sir Ben Kingsley, premiered at TIFF 2022.

Writer

Sarah Polley

Cast

Edward Holcroft, Rebeccah Liddiard, Sarah Gadon

Producers

Sarah Polley, D.J. Carson

Genre

Drama

Interests

Biography, Female Filmmaker, History, Literary Adaptation

Original Language

English

Rise: Sacred Water – Standing Rock Part 1

Director Michelle Latimer
Year 2017
Run Time 45min
Genre Documentary

This powerful documentary series from VICELAND gives viewers a rare glimpse into the frontline of Indigenous-led resistance, examining Indigenous life through the stories of people in diverse communities who are working to protect their homelands. Several episodes of this urgent and timely show debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and were hailed as “persuasive and poignant” by The New York Times.

Sacred Water: Standing Rock Part 1 The residents of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation of South Dakota are fighting to stop a pipeline from being built on their ancestral homeland. In this absorbing account of the events leading up to the protests, Anishinaabe host Sarain Carson-Fox provides context and background, telling the water protectors’ side of the story as the conflict develops right before our eyes.

Director

Michelle Latimer

A filmmaker and actor, Latimer’s first short, Choke, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Her credits include several documentaries and dramatic shorts, such as The Underground and Nuuca. She has directed the television series Rise, Burden of Truth and Trickster.

Cast

Gitz Crazyboy (Blackfoot/Dene), Sarain Carson-Fox (Anishinaabe)

Producer

Jarrett Martineau (nēhiyaw/Dene Sųłiné)

Genre

Documentary

Interests

BIPOC Stories, Discrimination, Environment, Female Filmmaker, History, Indigenous Filmmaker, Social Justice & Politics

Original Language

English

Rise: Red Power – Standing Rock Part 2

Director Michelle Latimer
Year 2017
Run Time 44min
Genre Documentary

This powerful documentary series from VICELAND gives viewers a rare glimpse into the frontline of Indigenous-led resistance, examining Indigenous life through the stories of people in diverse communities who are working to protect their homelands. Several episodes of this urgent and timely show debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and were hailed as “persuasive and poignant” by The New York Times.

Red Power: Standing Rock Part 2 As the #noDAPL movement grows in size and reaches a boiling point, over 5,000 people descend on the Standing Rock camp. Using the unprecedented occupation at Standing Rock as its starting point, this episode delves into the evolution of the Red Power Movement, combining history lessons about Indigenous-led resistance with explosive footage of this urgent and historic moment.

Director

Michelle Latimer

A filmmaker and actor, Latimer’s first short, Choke, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Her credits include several documentaries and dramatic shorts, such as The Underground and Nuuca. She has directed the television series Rise, Burden of Truth and Trickster.

Cast

Sarain Carson-Fox (Anishinaabe), Gitz Crazyboy (Blackfoot/Dene)

Producer

Jarrett Martineau (nēhiyaw/Dene Sųłiné)

Genre

Documentary

Interests

BIPOC Stories, Discrimination, Environment, Female Filmmaker, History, Indigenous Filmmaker, Social Justice & Politics

Original Language

English

The Stone Angel

Director Kari Skogland
Year 2007
Run Time 115min
Genre Drama
Margaret Laurence's much-lauded heroine Hagar Shipley may by 90 years old, but she is not ready to lie down and die just yet. When her son, Marvin (Dylan Baker), takes his mother to look at a nursing home, she takes it as her cue to leave her family behind and set out on one great last journey. Her mission is to locate the seaside home she remembers from her youth, but Hagar's memory is quickly fading, making it difficult for her to distinguish the past from the present. As she makes her way toward the seashore, Hagar realizes her time is running far too short to make up for a lifetime of unacknowledged mistakes.

Director

Kari Skogland

Writer

Kari Skogland

Cast

Ellen Burstyn, Dylan Baker, Sheila McCarthy, Judy Marshak

Producers

Kari Skogland, Liz Jarvis

Genre

Drama

Interests

Female Filmmaker, History, Literary Adaptation

Original Language

English

Mariages (Marriages)

Director Catherine Martin
Year 2001
Run Time 95min
Genre Drama, Romance, Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Quebec filmmaker Catherine Martin made her feature debut with this film about a 19th century woman struggling against oppressive Victorian social norms. 20-year-old Yvonne (Marie-Ève Bertrand) is a free spirit whose prudish, strict older sister Héleène (Guylaine Tremblay) struggles to contain her.

Helene intends to send her sister to a convent, and when Yvonne falls in love with the rakish Charles (David Boutin), Hélène concocts a scheme to keep them apart by arranging for him to marry her own teenage daughter. Unwilling to give up her passionate desires, Yvonne heads to the woods to find her own solution.

This finely crafted historical drama was awarded Best Feature by the Quebec Association of Film Critics in 2001.

Director

Catherine Martin

Writer

Catherine Martin

Cast

Marie-Ève Bertrand, Guylaine Tremblay, Hélène Loiselle

Producer

Lorraine Dufour

Genres

Drama, Romance, Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Interests

Family Relationships, Female Filmmaker, History

Original Language

French

La passion d’Augustine (The Passion of Augustine)

Director Léa Pool
Year 2015
Run Time 103min
Genre Drama

Céline Bonnier stars as Mother Augustine, a passionate and resilient Catholic nun who teaches music to children of all backgrounds in a convent school in rural Quebec in the 1960s. When her rebellious but musically gifted niece (Lysandre Ménard) joins the convent, Mother Augustine must confront a past that she strives to forget.

With the looming changes brought by Vatican II and Quebec's Quiet Revolution, the local government threatens to shut down the school in favour of public education, and Mother Augustine must search her soul for a solution – or perhaps a new calling. She and her fellow nuns are forced to confront the waves of modernity, but can Augustine move forward, or will she perish with tradition?

The film was nominated for two Canadian Screen Awards including Best Actress for Bonnier, and Best Original Score.

Director

Léa Pool

Pool has earned three Genie Award nominations for Best Direction. Her films include Emporte Moi, Mouvements du désir, Lost and Delirious, La dernière fugue and the documentary Pink Ribbons, Inc. Her recent films include the doc Double Sentence and the features La passion d'Augustine and Et au pire, on se mariera.

Writers

Léa Pool, Marie Vien

Cast

Céline Bonnier, Lysandre Ménard

Producers

Lyse Lafontaine, François Tremblay

Genre

Drama

Interests

Arts and Culture, Female Filmmaker, History

Original Language

French

Birth of a Family

Director Tasha Hubbard (Cree)
Year 2016
Run Time 79min
Genre Documentary
Four siblings, adopted as infants into separate families across North America, meet for the first time in this deeply moving documentary. 

Between 1955 and 1985, the federal and provincial governments in Canada took an estimated 20,000 Indigenous children from their homes and placed them in the child welfare system. Often referred to as the Sixties Scoop, this policy was part of the same trend of forced assimilation as residential schools.

Betty Ann was one of these children, and over several decades has worked tirelessly to track down her three siblings. As the foursome piece together their shared history, their family begins to take shape. 

This film tackles grief, redemption and discovery as it chronicles the family’s emotional reunion and captures an event that remains painfully elusive for many Indigenous people.
 
 

Director

Tasha Hubbard (Cree)

Hubbard is an award-winning filmmaker and an assistant professor in the University of Saskatchewan’s Department of English. Her writing-directing project Two Worlds Colliding won a Gemini and a Golden Sheaf Award. She has also directed the short film 7 Minutes, and the feature docs Birth of a Family and nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up, which won Best Canadian Documentary at Hot Docs and at the CSAs. She is currently directing the feature doc Singing Back the Buffalo.

Writers

Betty Ann Adam (Dene), Tasha Hubbard (Cree)

Producer

Bonnie Thompson

Genre

Documentary

Interests

Biography, BIPOC Stories, Discrimination, ESL, Family Relationships, Female Filmmaker, History, Indigenous Filmmaker, Social Justice & Politics, Strong Female Leads

Original Language

English

Rise: The Urban Rez

Director Michelle Latimer
Year 2017
Run Time 44min
Genre Documentary

Winnipeg is home to the largest urban Indigenous population in the country, with a high percentage living in a low-income neighbourhood with the highest crime rate in the city. In the face of a staggering number of cases of missing Indigenous women and girls, the community has decided to take a stand, working on an individual level to support, protect and improve the lives of its residents.

Hosted by Gitz Crazyboy (Blackfoot, Dene) this documentary shows the brave fighters who have dedicated themselves to the cause and delves into the underlying factors and intergenerational trauma that has allowed this environment to develop in the first place.

Director

Michelle Latimer

A filmmaker and actor, Latimer’s first short, Choke, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Her credits include several documentaries and dramatic shorts, such as The Underground and Nuuca. She has directed the television series Rise, Burden of Truth and Trickster.

Cast

Sarain Carson-Fox (Anishinaabe), Gitz Crazyboy (Blackfoot/Dene)

Producer

Jarrett Martineau (nēhiyaw/Dene Sųłiné)

Genre

Documentary

Interests

BIPOC Stories, Discrimination, Environment, Female Filmmaker, History, Indigenous Filmmaker, Social Justice & Politics

Original Language

English

Speakers for the Dead

Directors Jennifer Holness, Sudz Sutherland
Year 2000
Run Time 49min
Genre Documentary
A quest to restore a lost cemetery in rural Ontario divides a community and reveals deep truths of the hidden history of the Black community in Canada. In the 1930s, a farmer buried the tombstones of a Black cemetery to make way for a potato patch. Fifty years later, descendants of the original settlers, both Black and White, try to recover what remains of this history but face fierce opposition by those who believe the truth must remain buried.

Through a blend of interviews with residents, reenactments, and footage of the cemetery excavation, this powerful documentary highlights an important but rarely discussed aspect of Canadian history.

Directors

Jennifer Holness

Holness is a director, writer, and producer whose producing credits include award-winning films Stateless, Guns, and Love, Sex, and Eating the Bones, and series like She’s the Mayor and Shoot the Messenger. She wrote and directed Subjects of Desire and recently received the Canadian Media Producers Association’s Established Producer Award, and directed an episode of the series BLK: An Origin Story. Next, she is producing the feature Rip Tide.

Producer

Peter Starr

Genre

Documentary

Interests

BIPOC Stories, Black Filmmaker, Female Filmmaker, History, Social Justice & Politics

Original Language

English

Stories We Tell

Director Sarah Polley
Year 2012
Run Time 108min
Genre Documentary
What begins as a cinematic search for her mother who died when Polley was only 11 becomes a kind of family detective story delving into long-buried secrets about the filmmaker herself. Mixing interviews with archival footage and dramatizations, Polley explores the very nature of family and the conspiracy we enter into in order to protect the bonds we cherish with our loved ones.

As Polley interrogates each of her subjects in turn, contradictory accounts emerge, and longstanding efforts to hide some painful truths eventually become futile.

The “stories we tell” — that all families tell in one way or another — turn out to obscure as much as they reveal, and the whole idea of the purpose of narrative is called into question in a way that is both fascinating and poignant.

Director

Sarah Polley

Polley won a screenwriting Oscar nomination for Away From Her, and directed Take This Waltz and Stories We Tell. She wrote and produced Alias Grace, a miniseries based on Margaret Atwood’s novel, which premiered at TIFF 2017. In 2022 she published the essay collection Run Toward the Danger. Her most recent feature, an adaptation of Miriam Toews’ Women Talking, premiered at TIFF 2022.

Writer

Sarah Polley

Producers

Silvia Basmajian, Anita Lee

Genre

Documentary

Interests

Biography, Female Filmmaker, History

Original Language

English