Deep Rising, directed by Matthieu Rytz (Anote’s Ark) and narrated / executive produced by Jason Momoa, examines the consequences of strip mining the ocean floor for metals used in clean technologies, a rapidly approaching reality with dangerous consequences for fragile ocean ecosystems. Featuring exquisite underwater cinematography, Rytz takes a multifaceted approach to probing deep sea mining, following characters who view accessing these metals as necessary to a green future, and those who are opposed and seeking alternative sustainable solutions. The film exposes the International Seabed Authority, a secretive organisation in charge of protecting and conserving the ocean’s seabed, while navigating the complex interests of nation states and corporate agendas.

Written by: Lesley Johnson

Liz Marshall returns to the festival with s-yéwyáw: Awaken, a stirring collaboration with Indigenous multimedia changemakers. Animated by a spirit of reconciliation and infused with Indigenous ceremony, Marshall’s latest film follows members of the Nlaka’pamux, shíshálh, and Secwépemc First Nations as they document the traditional cultural teachings and legacies of their Elders, including the impacts of genocide resulting from the Residential School system. Intimate, candid, and crafted with warm sensitivity, s-yéwyáw: Awaken extends a precious invitation to witness the process of intergenerational healing.

Written by: Julian Carrington

The Karoo, an ancient desert region in South Africa, has become the most desirable site on the planet to build the world’s largest radio telescope. Its aim is to deepen our knowledge of space, by detecting signals from the early universe. In !AITSA, South African director Dane Dodds explores the universe and our desire to unlock its mysteries, weaving together scientific testimony with the ancient cosmic wisdom of the desert’s Indigenous Koisan people, and other locals who detail the wounds of South Africa’s modern history. Featuring stunning cinematography of the Karoo, imposing telescopes and dark celestial skies, the film questions humanity’s meaning in the infinite vastness of the universe. 

Written by: Lesley Johnson

Miyawata is a 15-year old Indigenous activist from Winnipeg, Canada, who never hesitates speak up for what she believes in. To protest the injustices that her people have faced throughout the history of Canada, she refuses to stand for the National Anthem. She’s on a mission to help Indigenous voices be heard and included. And she’s the very first organizer of school strikes for the climate in her hometown. The climate movement in Winnipeg had big momentum… until COVID hit. Now that the end of the pandemic is in sight, can she get the movement going again?

In addition to I Won’t Stand For It, the Family Day Program will include international short films, snacks and an interactive art exhibit! Learn more on the Family Day page.

Refined by millions of years of evolution, nature’s creatures and systems exhibit both extraordinary elegance and marvelous functionality. What better model, then, could a designer hope for? That’s the question at the heart of Biocentrics, a fascinating look at the principles that guide the practice of biomimicry—a transdisciplinary approach to innovation inspired by wondrous, naturally occurring forms. Surveying biomimicry’s influence on knowledge, culture, and technology, Filmmaker Fernanda Figueiredo and biologist Janine Benyus meet the international community of architects, engineers, philosophers and scientists contending with global challenges by looking to the natural world.

Written by: Julian Carrington

Inspired by Andreas Malm’s controversial book proposing strategic vandalism as a just response to the climate crisis, How to Blow Up a Pipeline is an urgent and gripping feat of cinematic agitprop. Director and co-writer Daniel Goldhaber takes Malm’s non-fiction treatise and reworks it into a deft thriller, centered on a crew of young activists who scheme to sabotage a conduit for Texan crude. Shrewdly employing the conventions of the heist genre, the film explores the compelling motivations of each plotter, interwoven with intense procedural sequences as they execute their daring, dangerous, and righteous mission. Earlier this year, the Alberta Energy Regulator cautioned that How to Blow Up a Pipeline could incite radical action, making it not only one of 2023’s most riveting big-screen releases, but also, perhaps, its most provocational.

Written by: Julian Carrington

Beginning with the industrial revolution, humans have been on a path to becoming redundant in the workplace, as more jobs are being lost to automation, computers and artificial intelligence. After Work is a highly stylish and thought provoking investigation of humanity’s relationship to work culture. In an astute and witty tone, Swedish director Erik Gandini travels across the globe to the US, South Korea, Kuwait, and Europe to examine different facets of values that shape work-life. Interviews with intellectuals and public figures such as Noam Chomsky and Elon Musk shape a narrative that questions how work affects our societies, and what will happen when technology takes over our jobs. Gandini asks, what could we be without work?

Written by: Lesley Johnson

In a time of turmoil in West Africa, Burkina Faso’s financial crisis caused a rise in the country’s artisanal mines. A Golden Life follows the coming of age story of Rasmané, a 16 year old boy working in a gold mine to provide a better future for himself. Burkinabe director Boubacar Sangaré delves into the daily life of Rasmané and other young men, who descend into the depths of the dangerous pit, hoping to find the precious metal. Filmed in a deftly cinematic, observational style, Sangaré captures the nuances of their lives, punctuating the hardship of their toiling labour by moments of true levity in their friendships outside the pit. The film creates a tender portrait of a young man making the best of difficult circumstances, in order to survive and grow into manhood. 

Written by: Lesley Johnson

Following a summer that saw African asylum-seekers shamefully neglected by Toronto’s shelter system—and with climate change poised to displace billions over the coming decades—The Hearing is essential, urgent viewing. This timely story, from Émilie Guérette and Peggy Nkunga Ndona, offers unprecedented, first-person insight into the workings of Canada’s asylum system. Having fled repression in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, co-director Ndona and her family seek to rebuild their lives in Montreal as, all the while, the threat of deportation looms. Documenting her own emotionally fraught journey through the asylum process along with her husband and three young children, she invites viewers to witness their struggle against a complex and coldly bureaucratic system.

Written by: Julian Carrington

While climate change has been linked to an increasing frequency of environmental disasters, climate anxiety is changing how we make decisions about our future. In the The Climate Baby Dilemma, director Victoria Lean (After the Last River, We’re All Gonna Die) explores why many young people are citing climate change as a reason not to have children and start families. Centred on the work of writer and academic, Dr. Britt Wray, whose research investigates how climate change impacts mental health, the film brings together stories of prominent and diverse activists and youth. In spite of the hesitancy to have children in a time of ecological crisis, its participants consider how one can transform climate anxiety and grief into transformative action.

Written by: Lesley Johnson

Hailed as a childhood prodigy, Edmonton-born pianist James Carson pursued his musical gifts all the way to the prestigious New England Conservatory. But a spiritual crisis would spur him to turn his back on music and prompt a two-year pastoral pilgrimage from Spain to Japan. Upon returning to his native Alberta, Carson set about building a remote, strawbale cabin where he would craft new compositions inspired by the natural wonders encountered on his travels. The symphonic, globe-spanning Cabin Music gives visual and sonic expression to that transformative journey. Featuring spellbinding performances and powerful, lyrical imagery, Carson’s directorial debut pays tribute to the transcendent forces of music and nature.

Written by: Julian Carrington

For Palestinians, Za’atar and the wild Aakoub thistle are essential plants to the cuisine. In Israel, conservation laws have prohibited foraging these plants in the wild, resulting in fines and the prosecution of many Palestinians. In a wry, humorous tone, Foragers depicts customs around these plants using a masterful combination of fiction, re-enactment, documentary and archival footage. Palestinian director Jumana Manna shows how these laws perpetuate the inequalities that divide Israelis and Palestinians, and how these unassuming desert plants have become symbolic to the Palestinian struggle, as joyous traditions collide with politics and ecology.

Written by: Lesley Johnson

For many urban-dwellers, caring for ferns or fig trees has become a primary opportunity to commune with nature. Featuring a colourful cast of passionate plant lovers, Light Needs inventively explores the surprisingly intimate and complex relations that can develop between houseplants and the humans with whom they cohabit. Pondering, without pretension, such questions as what it might feel like to transform sunlight into glucose, visual artist Jesse McLean suffuses the film with warmth, humour, and a sensuous attention to detail. Exquisitely photographed, and featuring a subtly enveloping score, Light Needs is a generous invitation to expand one’s consciousness, and to cultivate empathy for the non-human organisms that bring such vibrancy to our world.

Written by: Julian Carrington

An unusually intimate glimpse into the people, processes, and paradoxes of modern forestry practices, Silvicola is a sensorially immense contemplation on the psychic entanglement of humans, machines, and nature, set amongst the sprawling forests of the Canadian Pacific Northwest.

The fallout of the nuclear testing during the past century had severe consequences. For the people of Bikini Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands, the repercussions of detonating 67 nuclear bombs on their island during the Cold War continues today, leaving mass contamination and the former residents displaced. In Nuked, director Andrew Nisker (Coral Ghosts, Ground War), centres the Bikininian experience by using first-hand archival accounts and following the current mayor and council of Bikini on their stateside quest to seek justice for the islanders. Their goal is to hold the United States accountable to promises of assistance made to the islanders who sacrificed so much, and who want to return home. Featuring rare and illuminating archival footage of the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests, Nuked is an essential reminder of the cost of a nuclear arms race.

Written by: Lesley Johnson