 
 
SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS
Images Festival
Bodily Burden
We are excited to co-present the short film program Bodily Burden, featuring works by artists Christina Battle, Kym McDaniel, Naomi Rincón Gallardo, Sabīne Šnē, and Theo Cuthand. This powerful collection of six short films explores the relationship between the climate crisis and the vulnerable, permeable bodies and environments shaped by the toxic legacies of extractive industry. Blending experimental documentary, speculative fiction, personal storytelling, and performance, the program reflects on the often invisible impacts of pollution while offering moments of humour and unexpected absurdity amid grief and loss.
Friday, April 10th
National Canadian Film Day
The Falls (1991) 35th Anniversary screening with Desire in Motion
Join us for this special screening of The Falls, with director Kevin McMahon in attendance. This visually striking debut feature explores the mythology, beauty, and contradictions surrounding Niagara Falls, blending breathtaking cinematography by Douglas Koch with an evocative score by Kurt Swinghammer. Intimate in its detail yet expansive in scope, the film reflects on Niagara Falls as both an iconic natural wonder and one of the world’s most polluted waterways. Through poetic imagery and an unconventional approach to storytelling, The Falls reveals the landscape as a powerful microcosm of our world—capturing the tension between beauty and destruction, and the complex relationship between nature, industry, and human desire.
Wednesday, April 15th
HotDocs Cinema – Earth Day Screening
Fairy Creek
Join us for a special screening of Fairy Creek (Winner, Planet in Focus Best Canadian Feature Award 2024), followed by a virtual Q&A with director Jen Muranentz. This gripping documentary takes viewers to the frontlines of the Fairy Creek blockade on Vancouver Island, where activists fight to stop old-growth logging in one of Canada’s last pristine valleys.
As arrests begin and tensions rise, the protest grows into one of the largest acts of civil disobedience in Canadian history. Following blockaders, Indigenous land defenders, and loggers, Fairy Creek offers a powerful and unflinching portrait of environmental activism at a critical moment.
Sunday, April 19th
Past Co-Presentations
HotDocs Cinema
Everest Dark
We are very excited to co-present #PIF25 fan favourite Everest Dark on February 22, 2026 at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema, followed by a special post-screening discussion with producer Merit Jensen Carr, producer/writer Michael Bodnarchuk and film subject Mingma Tsiri Sherpa. Mount Everest has become the highest graveyard on Earth since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first summited in 1953, and in this gripping documentary, revered climber Mingma Tsiri Sherpa makes a fateful return to the mountain’s deadly Death Zone on a life-threatening mission that confronts faith, responsibility and the true cost of reaching the world’s highest peak.
Sunday, February 22nd
HotDocs Cinema
Teenage Wasteland
We are very excited to co-present Teenage Wasteland on Thursday, February 26 at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema, followed by a special post-screening discussion with film subject Fred Isseks. Set in 1991 in upstate New York, the film follows a group of teenage misfits who, inspired by their unconventional English teacher, embark on a student film project that uncovers a shocking environmental conspiracy in their small town. Drawing on hundreds of hours of candid archival footage, Teenage Wasteland is a nostalgic and powerful coming-of-age story about civic courage, youthful determination and the lasting impact of standing up to those in power.
Thursday, February 26th
HotDocs Cinema
Fashion Reimagined
We are very excited to co-present #PIF22 fan favourite, Fashion Reimagined, as it returns to Toronto from June 16-30, 2023 at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema. The Tuesday, June 27th screening will be followed by a panel discussion featuring guests Sarah Remple from Fashion Revolution, Kelly Drennan, founder of Fashion Takes Action and our very own Executive Director, Katherine Bruce as moderator. Fashion designer Amy Powney of cult label Mother of Pearl is a rising star in the London fashion scene. Raised off-the-grid in rural England by activist parents, Amy has always felt uneasy about the devastating environmental impact of her industry.
Tuesday, June 27th
HotDocs 2023
LYNX MAN
We are very excited to co-present Lynx Man at the 30th anniversary Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, taking place April 27 to May 7. Celebrate 30 years of outstanding stories and the filmmakers and audiences who have shared them with us. In Lynx Man, A Finnish pensioner devoted to saving the Eurasian lynx from extinction becomes so immersed in the animals he tracks, photographs and leaves cat toys for, that he finds himself becoming one of them.
Saturday, April 29th & Friday, May 5th
TIFF Cinematheque
ALL THAT BREATHES
Mark Earth Day with this special screening, presented in partnership with TIFF CINEMATHEQUE SPECIAL SCREENINGS. Introduction by Planet in Focus Senior Programmer Lesley Johnson, followed by a virtual Q&A with filmmaker Shaunak Sen. Winner of Cannes’ top documentary prize and nominated this year for an Oscar, Shaunak Sen’s immersive and hypnotic mood piece tells two tales: that of New Delhi brothers, Nadeem and Saud, who have made it their mission against many odds to save and rehabilitate local birds of prey; and that of the man-made ecological and humanist crises we routinely bear witness to.
EARTH DAY 2023 – Saturday, April 22nd
Images Festival
Leaky Gardens
“Leaky Gardens” includes the festival’s second feature-length film: Of Roses [how to embody the layers of time] Fragments of a bibliography, which is visual artist Eve Tagny’s first documentary-style film. Accompanied by short films by Vanessa Dion Fletcher (Writing Landscape) and Yza Nouiga (Jardins Paradise), “Leaky Gardens” complicates the notion of the garden as a gentle refuge and reveals its colonial roots. This in-cinema screening is accompanied by an intaglio print by Vanessa Dion Fletcher located in this digital catalogue. This program is part of the suite ok to rest curated by Jaclyn Quaresma.
June 25, 2022
No.9 Gardens
The Magnitude of All Things
A night to remember at No. 9 Gardens! This unique 40-acre educational facility is Canada’s First Sustainability and Reconciliation Centre. It is a lab for research and the implementation of innovative projects and practices that lead to low carbon communities and a sustainable lifestyle. Their first outdoor screening in the No. 9 Gardens takes place this September with a screening of The Magnitude of All Things.
September 26, 2021
Chautauqua Institution
Films for Change
Chautauqua Institution launches a partnership with the Toronto-based Planet in Focus International Environmental Film Festival as the Cinema presents a double “Films for Change” feature. The morning begins with “What About Our Future?” followed by Jennifer Abbott’s “The Magnitude of All Things,” an 86-minute documentary of the emotional and psychological dimensions of climate change. The films share stories from the frontlines of climate change, and draws parallels between the experiences of grief — both personal and planetary. Director of Chautauqua Climate Change Initiative Mark Wenzler will deliver remarks at the Cinema for this morning’s screenings.
August 6, 2021