THE VIRTUAL SCHOOL PROGRAM
In addition to the live family program films, teachers across Canada may purchase a ticket to the virtual education shorts programs with additional festival films specially curated for young students. This program will also include winners from the Planet in Focus Eco-Film Lab and national winners of the EcoSchools Canada Young Reporters for the Environment Competition!
I Won’t Stand For It
29mins // 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?
Pond
8 mins // When seagulls suddenly attack, one small herring finds itself stranded in a tidal pool. Only by joining forces with new friends can they hope to defend themselves against the hungry seagull.
Spuffies
11 Mins // Spuffies have a serious thing for jubees. When they’ve eaten the very last delicious fruit and hunger is about to strike, they head to the jubee grove, through the murky forest.
Inbetweening Beings
5 mins // Inbetweening Beings connects animation and ecology. With projected installation, outdoor stop-motion, and found materials, humans are invited and implicated into nature.
The Toxicity of Vinyl Records
3 mins // A winner of the EcoSchools Canada Youth Reporters for the Environment national competition, this student-made film is all about the dangers of vinyl records.
Shirampari: Legacies of the River
16 Mins // In the remote Peruvian Amazon, an Ashéninka boy must overcome his fears and catch a giant catfish.
Food Waste in Canadian Schools
3 mins // A winner of the EcoSchools Canada Youth Reporters for the Environment national competition, this student-made film covers battling food waste at schools.
Keepers of the Land
29 mins // In the heart of British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest, one Nation is reclaiming the power they held for millennia. As the impacts of colonial exploitation and mismanagement take an increasing toll on their territory, the Kitasoo Xai’xais Nation finds strength in its stories and culture, emerging as a stewardship leader in a new age of reconciliation in Canada. A powerful story of resurgence, the weight of hereditary leadership, and the responsibility they carry into the modern world told through the eyes of elder and hereditary chief Nismuutk, Ernest Mason Jr., and the new young leaders following in his footsteps.
Soleil de Nuit
13 mins // During an astronaut training in an abandoned open-pit mine, a crew of Canadian astronauts is interrupted by an Atikamekw elder.
Field Notes
10 mins // A woman discovers a passion for bird-watching during her pandemic isolation, which leads to an appreciation for the natural world that exists in the midst of the concrete jungle.
Finding Our Wild
15 mins // On a long overdue camping trip, Prabha and his son Sid find themselves working through feelings about immigration, fatherhood and aging.
Losing Blue
16 mins // A cinematic poem about losing the otherworldly blues of ancient mountain lakes, now fading due to climate change and understand what their loss would mean—both for ourselves and for the Earth.
Do You Hear What I Hear?
8 mins // Fed up with sleepless nights, a couple of activists fight Toronto City Hall in the hopes of changing the outdated noise bylaws.
Tiny
16 mins // A contemplative stop motion film which tells the story of ‘Nakwaxda’xw Elder Colleen’s childhood in the Pacific Northwest and how much more harmonious her community was with nature.