2024 Film Programme
OPENING NIGHT: Made in Ethiopia
Tuesday, October 15 // 6:30pm
Once primarily a site of traditional, small-scale farming, the Ethiopian town of Dukem now finds itself on the frontlines of globalization. In 2007, Dukem became host to the Eastern Industry Zone, a mammoth manufacturing campus built by a Chinese investment consortium. Made in Ethiopia begins as the project enters its second phase, following Motto, the industrial park’s formidably ambitious Chinese director, as she seeks to push through an expansion that will devour huge swaths of Dukem’s remaining farmland. The film also follows Workinesh, one of the farmers pursuing just compensation for the appropriation of her land, and Beti, a factory worker who hopes to share in the industrial park’s promise of prosperity. Filming over four years, co-directors Xinyan Yu and Max Duncan seek to lift the curtain on China’s increasing and often misunderstood impact on Africa. With the support of Ethiopian-Canadian producer Tamara Dawit, they have gained remarkable access, offering a nuanced, multi-perspective approach that transcends simple narratives of victims and villains. As its protagonists’ stories unfold, Made in Ethiopia poses probing questions as to the relationship between tradition and modernity, growth and welfare, the development of a country and the well-being of its people.
The Birdman of Cooper Island
Wednesday, October 16 // 7:00pm
George Divoky’s patient documentation of an Alaskan Black Guillemot colony on the shrinking sea ice was one of the world’s first documented evidence of climate change, introducing George as a reluctant hero in the climate change movement.
George Divoky has returned to the rugged conditions of Alaska’s coastline every year since 1972 to collect data on a dwindling Black Guillemot colony. His patient observations of the arctic seabird’s population on shrinking sea ice was one of the world’s first documented evidence of climate change, thrusting him into the spotlight. In director Kevin McMahon’s sensitive homage to a scientist driven to observe the sea bird’s story in its rapidly changing environment, George wrestles with becoming a reluctant hero in the climate change movement, and coming to terms with the meaning of his life’s journey on his remote arctic island paradise.
Nature, Wildlife, Arctic, Science, Climate change
Preceeded by
Arctic Ice: Under the Midnight Sun
‘Arctic Ice: Under The Midnight Sun’ is a collaboration between filmmaker Michelle Sanders and composer Alice Boyd. An audiovisual exploration of the beauty of Arctic ice – and the perils it faces – the film is a love letter to an ecosystem on which we all depend, one which is rapidly disappearing.
Described by legendary music producer Brian Eno as “Beautiful” and by acclaimed filmmaker Tom Mustill as “Mesmerising, unnerving and playful. An intriguing and beautiful film that lets you have your own thoughts and changes you a little in the tiny time you watch it. So full of textures I wanted to reach out and touch it. I love this film.“ the film seeks to break traditional formats, reaching into the emotions of sea ice and reminding us, tangibly, what is at stake in a rapidly warming world.
Rainbow Warrior
Wednesday, October 16, 9:30pm
On July 10 1985, the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior was docked in Auckland, New Zealand, en route to a protest against French nuclear testing in the South Pacific. Shortly before midnight, a pair of explosions would sink the vessel and tragically claim the life of one of its crew. Rainbow Warrior is the engrossing, stranger-than-fiction story of that fateful event and the ensuing investigation—an investigation that would thrust the unassuming Aukland police force into the centre of a genuine geopolitical conspiracy, and which would ultimately reveal Greenpeace to have been the target of a state-sponsored act of terror. Working from a trove of arresting archival material and featuring new tell-all interviews with the direct historical protagonists, director Edward McGurn has crafted a real-life spy thriller, replete with twists and shocking revelations. Released in an era of renewed nuclear anxiety, and in a moment that has seen Western governments targeting environmental activists with increasingly draconian restrictive measures, Rainbow Warrior is, despite its vintage style, a remarkably present-tense experience.
Fairy Creek
Thursday, October 17 // 6:30pm
In Fairy Creek, director Jen Muranetz documents the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history, creating a searing portrait of contemporary environmental activism, bearing witness to the lengths activists are willing to take to protect British Columbia’s last old growth forests.
A new chapter in the long standing battle for British Columbia’s pristine forests has unfolded on Vancouver island. Spirited environmentalists become embroiled in a series of often violent altercations with loggers and RCMP, after deploying a series of tactics to stop logging access to an old growth forested area. The activists show incredible conviction to their cause, while having compelling internal debates about whose voices are prioritized in the movement. In Fairy Creek, director Jen Muranetz documents the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history, creating a searing portrait of contemporary environmental activism, bearing witness to the lengths activists are willing to take to protect British Columbia’s last old growth forests.
Activism, Civil disobedience, Logging, Old growth forestry
Preceeded by
Save Solace
An environmental group embarks on a canoe trip to investigate the construction of a new logging road set to dissect the Solace Wildlands, the last unprotected roadless forest in Temagami.
Asog
Thursday, October 17 // 9:00pm
A wildly inventive blend of comedy, climate activism, and community collaboration, Asog is a genre-defying cinematic sojourn from Filipino-Canadian multihyphenate Seán Devlin 叶世民. Teaming with survivors of one of the most devastating typhoons to ever hit the Philippines, Devlin has crafted a vibrantly queer road movie like no other. It stars the luminous, irreverent Jaya, a non-binary television comedian bound for a beauty pageant, hoping that the prize money can help them rebuild following the deadly storm. Jaya is joined on their journey by Arnel, a wide-eyed young man hoping to reconnect with family members scattered in the typhoon’s wake. Travelling together cross-country, the duo encounters an array of fellow survivors also contending with the storm’s impacts, including an attempted land-grab by opportunistic developers. Enmeshing its docu-fictional narrative with the real-life struggles of displaced residents, the Asog team calls the film a “cinematic intervention.” The Tribeca Festival, meanwhile, has hailed it as “a monument of trans cinema.” However you label it, Asog is a singular creation, and a bold embodiment of the kind of solidarity that the climate emergency demands of us all.
Preceded by
To Be a Good Home
This is a story about a place. It’s a story about growing, connecting, and caring. This is a story about soil, water, and land.
To Be A Good Home follows three women farming and stewarding the land in northern Minnesota. One is a direct descendant of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, tending her plot at the place of the gardens, Gitigaaning. One is an urban farmer, feeding her neighborhood near the shores of Lake Superior, Gichigami. One is a regenerative farmer and rancher, caring for her herd and building the soil with them.
Hunt for the Oldest DNA
Friday, October 18 // 7:00pm
Danish evolutionary geneticist Eske Willerslev’s singular obsession with sequencing DNA fragments buried in Greenland’s permafrost has unlocked secrets of ancient ecosystems that parallel our own climate, asking important questions about our own survival.
Danish evolutionary geneticist Eske Willerslev is known for his pioneering work sequencing DNA fragments buried in Greenland’s permafrost, unlocking secrets of ancient ecosystems. In The Hunt for Ancient DNA, director Niobe Thompson examines the drive it takes to create preeminent scientific work, delving into the story of a scientist whose singular obsession with creating prestigious research has come with both great success and cost. Dr. Willerslev and his research team have made major revelations about the rich and diverse world of the mild Pliocene era, drawing parallels to the current warming climate, asking important questions about
our own survival.
Nature, Science, Prehistoric discovery, Climate change
Preceeded by
The Everlasting Pea
An enchanting exploration of plant life that blends scientific inquiry with ancient ruins and mysterious dreamscapes. Through the eyes of a scientist questioning plant consciousness, a pea plant dreaming of its past in Rome’s Colosseum, and a botanist unravelling a mystery, The Everlasting Pea invites a profound reimagining of our relationship with the vegetal world.
Knit’s Island
Friday, October 18, 9:00pm
Planet In Focus is no stranger to stories with apocalyptic implications, but the brilliant Knit’s Island represents a first for the festival: a fully post-apocalyptic experience. It’s also the first time the festival has exhibited a feature “filmed” within an entirely digital landscape. Captured from 963 hours spent inside the enormous and extraordinarily detailed world of DayZ, the film’s most surprising facet may be just how much it exalts in the multiplayer survival game’s ersatz wilderness. From breathtaking night skies to virtual vegetation that sways gently in the breeze, this is a simulation so comprehensive that it’s easy to understand why a dedicated core of players continue to inhabit it over a decade after the game’s initial release. For many of those remaining, the game has long ceased to be a competitive endeavor. Instead, and particularly during the pandemic, it became a space to build community and commune with fellow players on distant continents—a world that “feels less thin than the real one,” in the words of one of one participant. How might our growing attachment to virtual spaces impact our relationship to our physical planet? That’s one question among many that the fascinating, contemplative, and deeply human Knit’s Island may invite you to ponder.
Preceeded by
In·flu·ence
How do we influence the world around us? A fluid analysis tool ordinarily used in the laboratory offers new interpretations of human interaction and provides surprising insights about our place in the world.
The Family Day:
Saturday, October 19 // 12:00pm
How Water Makes Climate
How Water makes Climate, is an original 12-minute animation, portrays the crucial connection between water cycles and the climate. The animation shows what a healthy intact water cycle is, the consequences of its destruction, and how our broken water cycle can be restored. How Water makes Climate is an engaging and educational animation that inspires youth to learn about the importance of water and with that, to also take action in their communities, as many are already doing.
Three Trees
As the seasons change, three little trees learn about themselves, friendship and their place in the world.
Mû
“Mû” is a 2D animated short film that poetically explores the theme of water scarcity and the importance of water as a life-giving force.
As an essential divine water spring has dried up, a child accompanied by an otter-like creature sets out to find a cure for the life-threatening water shortage.
Three Hares
Three Hares weaves an enchanting creation myth and the mystical origin story of the ancient three hares symbol into an environmental tale about three sisters who must remind mankind to respect the earth in order to protect their future.
The three hares are sisters who are the children of the sun and the moon. Each hare joins with a different element – Air, Water, and Earth – to bear all living creatures on the planet, including mankind. As humans develop over many years and become intelligent, they also become wasteful and greedy. Obsessed with productivity, humans decide to wage war against the moon and the burden of sleep. The three hares come together to form a powerful symbol inside the moon to remind mankind that the earth must be shared and respected to protect their future. Inspired by the ancient three hares motif, whose mystical associations have spanned diverse cultures and religions across centuries.
For You
For You is a touching letter from a father to his two-year-old son, capturing a summer day in the park—a world filled with wonders yet to be discovered, while an uncertain future casts a shadow on the horizon. Set in Peckham, South East London, where the director lives with his family, the story is narrated in Italian, the language he has spoken to his son since birth. Deeply intimate and personal, this project also carries a universal message: though the future may be uncertain, with love, courage, and imagination, we can choose to foster a positive perspective for what lies ahead instead of succumbing to fear.
Keradó
One day, while collecting jagua fruits, a young Embera Katío girl, Chidima, is lured by
a glowing, mystical toad into the forbidden zone of a hydroelectric power plant that
put her village in danger, where she accidentally discovers a sacred cave. Frightened, she runs away and tells her grandfather what she saw, unexpectedly bringing a new hope for her people.
The Life of Foxes
A Life of Foxes brings viewers up close and personal with a family of foxes in the West Island of Montreal, Canada in order to explore the challenges and complexities of telling non-human stories through film.
Tea Creek
Saturday, October 19 // 3:00pm
Tsimshian farmer Jacob Beating is on a mission to promote healthy Indigenous communities through local food, undoing the legacy of colonization on food security by training a new generation of Indigenous farmers, while balancing the challenges and precarity of farming that threaten the future of Tea Creek Farm and its larger vision.
Jacob Beaton is an unassuming Tsimshian farmer on an extraordinary mission to promote healthy Indigenous communities centered on land-based practices and local food. Nestled in Gitxsan ancestral territory, he and his family run Tea Creek Farm and Indigenous Food Sovereignty Training Center. While Jacob has witnessed the profound effect of his farm on its Indigenous trainees, he faces the challenges and precarity of farming that threaten the future of Tea Creek and its larger vision. Featuring beautiful footage set in the striking Northern British Columbia landscape, Dene director Ryan Dickie explores how colonization impacts food security in Indigenous communities, weaving themes of sovereignty, mental health, and leadership into a film that illuminates the healing power of growing food.
Indigenous food sovereignty and security, Farming, Mental health, Healing
Preceeded by
Edaxàdets’eetè / We Save Ourselves
Edaxàdets’eetè is a 5 minute short documentary that explores the connection between Indigenous language revitalization and climate action. Produced during a climate crisis in her own community, Sadetło Scott made this film as an ode to the land and the trees.
Incandescence
Saturday, October 19 // 6:30pm
Returning to the Planet In Focus lineup for the first time since 2013’s Occupy Love, veteran collaborators Nova Ami and Velcrow Ripper have turned their cameras to one of the most potent manifestations of the climate emergency: the wildfires that now ravage our forests and landscapes with frightening regularity. An intense and immersive cinematic experience, Incandescence features on-the-ground footage captured alongside the first responders called upon to battle these hugely destructive blazes. But it also weaves together remarkable accounts of survival and adaptation, endeavoring to transform our understanding of wildfires, their consequences, and how humans might hope to better coexist with this awesome elemental phenomenon. While colonial fire suppression strategies have struggled to cope with our warming planet, Indigenous knowledge keepers demonstrate the controlled burns that First Nations people have traditionally relied upon to regenerate the land. Incandescence seeks to illuminate that timeless cycle of destruction, aftermath, and rebirth. Ami and Ripper also seek to honour the experience of both human and non-human inhabitants, conveying how fire’s potential for destruction might become an equally powerful force for growth and renewal.
As The Tide Comes In
Saturday, October 19, 9:00pm
Few communities experience the impact of climate change as acutely as the denizens of Mandø, a tiny island off the Danish coast. Numbering just 27 inhabitants, it firmly puts the “micro” in microcosm, as rising sea levels portend a grim fate that may eventually confront humanity at large. But like humankind in general, Mandø’s residents are a resilient, quirky, and often comical bunch. With As the Tide Comes In, co-directors Juan Palacios and Sofie Husum Johannesen accentuate that latter quality, infusing their feature with a rich seam of Scandinavian humour. They also take full advantage of Mandø’s rugged vistas to fashion a film of sublime beauty. The result is a captivating documentary that is also sure to enchant cinephiles, fusing Honeyland’s masterful craft with Roy Andersson’s wry existentialism. At its heart sits Gregers, who, at 42, is the island’s youngest resident. With ties to Mandø extending for eight generations, he’s undaunted by impending doom. Rather than leave, he hopes to find a partner to manage his family business… with the aid of reality dating show Farmer Wants a Wife. Also featuring most of his similarly eccentric neighbours, As the Tide Comes In is a deceptively generous reflection on Mandø’s looming predicament—which, of course, we all ultimately share.
Preceded by
An Impression of Everything
A brief impression of everything. An attempt to glimpse the oneness of being, in the face of escalating world division and disassociation. A lyrical film culled from footage accumulated over more than a decade of productions, as well as old family archival, and stock footage.
La Guardia Blanca
Sunday, October 20 // 3:00pm
There is a growing recognition in Mexico of the collusion between industry, organized crime and the Mexican government, which is having a chilling effect on citizens and Land Defenders, while multinational corporations, including Canadian mines, are complicit in a vicious cycle of corruption and violence.
In Mexico, where unrestrained mining has turned many rural communities into virtual ghost towns, there is a growing recognition of the collusion between industry, organized crime and the Mexican government, which is having a chilling effect on locals and Land Defenders. In La Guardia Blanca, the voices of citizens share stories of land displacement and the fear of reprisal for speaking against expansive extractive projects infringing on their homes. Through lush jungles, winding rivers and arid desert landscapes, director Julian Elie’s exquisitely lensed film
underscores the complicity of multinational corporations, including Canadian mines, in a vicious cycle of corruption and violence.
Mining, Environment, Human rights, Corporate responsibility
CLOSING NIGHT & AWARDS: Resident Orca
Sunday, October 20 // 6:30pm
Resident Orca follows a passionate group of characters trying to free Lolita, also known as Tokitae or Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut, the last of the Southern Resident Killer Whales in captivity, whose time is running out as she ages in the Miami Seaquarium.
Resident Orca tells the story of Lolita, also known as Tokitae or Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut, the last of the Southern Resident Killer Whales in captivity, who lived the majority of her life performing for visitors in a small tank at the Miami Seaquarium. Directors Sarah Sharkey Pearce and Simon Schneider introduce a passionate group of characters fighting for her freedom, following the development of an unusual partnership between members of the Lummi tribe and a rich philanthropist who is prepared to bankroll her release back into her natal waters. The film maintains a deeply emotional connection to the aging killer whale, questioning what is objectively in her best interest and who has the right to decide.
Animal rights, Sea mammals, Oceans, Activism
Preceeded by
Pet Store
Larry Wallach insists that exotic pet ownership is safe and ethical and anyone who disagrees should visit Sloth Encounters, his petting zoo next to a freeway on Long Island, to see for themselves.