Interest: Social Justice & Politics
Rise: Red Power – Standing Rock Part 2
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
Fire
When it was released in the late 1990s, Fire’s incendiary subject matter led to protests and government interventions in India. Years later, the internationally acclaimed film is as seductive and moving as ever.
The film won seven awards at film festivals around the world, including "Most Popular Canadian Film" at the Vancouver International Film Festival.
Director
Deepa Mehta
A member of the Order of Canada, Mehta is an award-winning filmmaker who gained acclaim for her trilogy, Fire, Earth and the Oscar-nominated Water. Her adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children was nominated for eight CSAs. She has also directed Bollywood/Hollywood, Beeba Boys, Anatomy of Violence, and many other films. Her film Funny Boy won multiple awards, including the CSAs for best direction and best screenplay. Her television credits include episodes of Leila, Yellowjackets, and Little America.
Writer
Deepa Mehta
Cast
Shabana Azmi, Nandita Das, Karishma Jhalani
Producers
Bobby Bedi, David Hamilton, Deepa Mehta
Genres
Drama, Romance
Interests
Asian Filmmaker, Female Filmmaker, Global Experiences, LGBTQ2S+, Social Justice & Politics, Strong Female Leads
Original Language
English
Guantanamo’s Child: Omar Khadr
His subsequent detention at Guantanamo Bay, a harsh prison on the southern coast of Cuba, became the topic of a major political debate, as child soldiers have not been prosecuted for war crimes since WWII.
Guantanamo’s Child gives Khadr a chance to speak for himself on camera for the first time. More than just a stirring story, this documentary delivers an engrossing intimate portrait of how a teenager from a Toronto suburb became the first juvenile to ever be tried for war crimes.
Directors
Michelle Shephard, Patrick Reed
Producers
Peter Raymont, Patrick Reed, Michelle Shephard
Genre
Documentary
Interests
Biography, BIPOC Stories, Female Filmmaker, Global Experiences, Social Justice & Politics
Original Language
English
Manufactured Landscapes
An impactful but subtle statement about humanity’s impact on the world, Manufactured Landscapes’ powerful images raise more questions than answers.
Director
Jennifer Baichwal
Baichwal is an award-winning director who has collaborated with her partner, producer and cinematographer Nicholas de Pencier, on documentaries such as the CSA-winning trilogy Manufactured Landscapes, Watermark, and Anthropocene: The Human Epoch, with Edward Burtynsky. Her other credits include Act of God, Payback, and Long Time Running, among others. She has won 13 awards, including three CSAs.
Cast
Edward Burtynsky
Producers
Jennifer Baichwal, Nick de Pencier, Daniel Iron
Genre
Documentary
Interests
Asian Filmmaker, Environment, Female Filmmaker, Global Experiences, Social Justice & Politics
Original Language
English
Sea of Life
Culminating in the demonstrations leading up to the important but ultimately ineffective Paris Climate Agreement, this documentary charts a path for what comes next and how a conscious treatment of the ocean could present the answer to keeping our planet liveable and beautiful for generations to come.
Director
Julia Barnes
Barnes' eco-activism began at 16 after seeing Rob Stewart's Revolution. Inspired, she made Sea of Life, documenting an epic journey to save ocean ecosystems that we depend on for survival. Her work has taken her to the Florida Keys, the Galapagos, and COP21 in Paris. She also directed the documentary Bright Green Lies.
Writer
Julia Barnes
Cast
Julia Barnes, Rob Stewart
Producer
Julia Barnes
Genre
Documentary
Interests
Environment, Female Filmmaker, Social Justice & Politics
Original Language
English
Own Voice
2022 - Celebrating Indigenous Voices
2019 - 100 Years of Snow and Sass
2018 - Women: Take on the World
Birth of a Family
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 documentary filmmaker and an associate professor in the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Native Studies. Her NFB documentary 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, nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up, which won 14 awards, including the CSA for best documentary and Best Canadian Documentary at Hot Docs 2019. She is a founding director of the International Buffalo Relations Institute. Her documentary Singing Back the Buffalo won three awards and was nominated for four others.
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
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
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
Payback
Director
Jennifer Baichwal
Baichwal is an award-winning director who frequently collaborates with her partner, producer and cinematographer Nicholas de Pencier, on documentaries such as the CSA-winning trilogy Manufactured Landscapes, Watermark and Anthropocene (with Edward Burtynsky). Their other credits include The True Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams' Appalachia, Act of God, and Into the Weeds, among others. She has won 12 awards, including two CSAs.
Writer
Jennifer Baichwal
Producer
Ravida Din
Genre
Documentary
Interests
Asian Filmmaker, Female Filmmaker, Literary Adaptation, Social Justice & Politics
Original Language
English
Visually captivating, sly and clever, Fido follows the Robinson family, who have been hesitant to get a zombie of their own even though everyone on the block has one. All that changes when Mom (Moss) buys Fido (Connolly), and the loveable brute becomes young Timmy’s best friend. Fido is a funny, satirical and refreshing movie with an all-star cast and a standout performance by Billy Connolly as Fido.
“Currie’s zombie comedy is in a class by itself.”
— Lori Fireman, NOW Magazine
Director
Andrew Currie
Currie is a filmmaker, writer and producer whose directing credits include the shorts Persistence of Memory and Night of the Living, and the features Mile Zero, Barricade, and The Steps. He also wrote and directed the features Fido and The Invisibles and directed TV movies such as Twisteeria and Sleep Murder. He produced the feature The Delicate Art of Parking, and executive produced the features Lawrence & Holloman and Indian Road Trip, and the shorts G8 and Cloud Striker.
Writers
Robert Chomiak, Andrew Currie, Dennis Heaton
Cast
Carrie-Anne Moss, Billy Connolly, Dylan Baker, Henry Czerny
Producers
Blake Corbet, Mary Anne Waterhouse
Genres
Comedy, Horror
Interests
Cult & Offbeat Cinema, Social Justice & Politics
Original Language
English