Canada Council for the Arts

An emotionally constrained view of the displacement of human feelings in our video saturated society. Van regularly visits his grandmother in a run-down nursing home. His father depends on phone sex for guidance meanwhile erasing family homevideos of happier times with homemade pornography. Will Van rescue his grandmother and memories of his mother in time?

An open and honest autobiographical account of male sexuality centered on Frank, an unemployed photographer, and his circle of mainly gay friends. He and his best friend, Bozo, attempt to have sex, although they consider themselves straight. But things begin to fall apart when Frank meets and falls in love with Johnny, a 13-year-old boy.

An international team of art restorers and archaeologists begin work on the restoration of medieval frescoes inside a network of ancient caves. Faced with local bureaucratic challenges and systemic neglect of archaeological sites, the team encounters a community of shepherds and migrants that have used the caves for centuries and discover a living culture worth preserving most of all.

A short documentary following Koyote Moone and her medical and psychiatric service dog Banner. This film explores issues surrounding non-visible disabilities and discrimination against service dog teams.

A portrait of a Vietnamese-Canadian family opening up a restaurant and cocktail bar in Calgary's Chinatown, amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Inspired by the early trash films of John Waters, the film stars Estdelacropolis as Demira, a gay porn actor struggling with both his emotionally complicated relationship with his mother Esther and his desire to break out of porn and into mainstream movies. He connects with a Freudian psychiatrist who is convinced that his homosexuality stems from an unresolved Oedipus complex which he has repressed by denying his natural attractions to women, to which the psychiatrist's proposed solution is to hypnotize Esther into believing that she is a man so that men will become the gender that sexually repulses Demira; in his career, he is ambivalent when the first "mainstream" role he is able to land is a gore film in which he will play the victim of a cannibal family for which Esther has also been cast as the mother.

Fleeing to Tokyo with the hopes that she can fulfil her dream of becoming a dancer, Yume is met with the harsh reality that success isn’t something that comes quickly or easily. Whilst juggling her job as a hostess in Tokyo’s red-light district, Yume throws herself headfirst into studying the artform and integrating herself into the underground dance community.

At the height of the October Revolution during the 1919 allied intervention in Arkhangelsk, the exploits of one-legged Canadian soldier Lt. John Boles are told, after he is taken in from the cold by a dysfunctional Russian family and mistakes a local woman for his presumed dead lover.

Four young office workers have a bet going to see who can last the longest without going outside. In the maze that is the downtown core of a large city, glass skywalks connect apartment buildings, office towers and shopping malls. Its day 28 of the bet and over the lunch hour, as the office prepares for the company founder's retirement party, things start to seriously unravel.

A wickedly funny satire about the disparity between a woman's natural beauty and the ideal promoted by the mega-billion dollar advertising industry, this animated film shows us how far we will go to change the shape of our bodies to meet the demands of an impossible image. But the picture-perfect exterior can be maintained by our heroine only if she restrains her body's natural spontaneity. YOUR NAME IN CELLULITE visually ponders at what point the body will say "Enough is enough!" and take matters into its own hands.

The mountain-village passions of a German widow and her sons unfold in the style of a 1920s expressionist movie.

This documentary features the story of Jules Paivio, the last living Canadian volunteer of the infamous Mackenzie-Papineau Battallion of the “International Brigades”. When Jules left from his home near Port Arthur (Thunder Bay), Ontario, his father, a famous Finnish poet, wrote a lasting lament: “To My Son In Spain”. In 1936-37, 1700 Canadians volunteered to fight with the Spanish people against a fascist coup d’etat led by elements of the Spanish Army. Backed by Musselini and Hitler, the fascists were bent on overthrowing Spain’s democratically elected socialist government and replacing it with military and church rule. It could be argued this conflict marked the true beginning of what would become World War II.

“In 1946, my great-grandfather murdered a black man named Bill Spann and got away with it.” So begins Travis Wilkerson’s critically acclaimed documentary, DID YOU WONDER WHO FIRED THE GUN?, which takes us on a journey through the American South to uncover the truth behind a horrific incident and the societal mores that allowed it to happen. Acting as narrator and guide, Wilkerson spins a strange, frightening tale, incorporating scenes from TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, the music of Janelle Monáe and Phil Ochs, and the story of Rosa Parks’ investigation into the Recy Taylor case, as well as his own family history, for a gripping investigation into our collective past and its echoes into the present day.

This short film is an ode to the women who settled the Prairies, from the days of early immigration to 1916 - when Manitobans became the first women in Canada to receive the provincial vote - and beyond. Recollections of women are complemented by a series of quotations drawn from letters, diaries, and newspapers of the day, which are spoken over re-enacted scenes and archival photographs.

A recent graduate is urged by an impossibly perfect woman to start digging a hole in a nearby park, setting in motion a chain of events that threaten her emotional balance and carefully maintained routines.

Over the years, a child's romantic ideals about death blossom into necrophilia, the study of embalming and the most profound relationship of her life.

A surreal and comic exploration of an office space and its inhabitants and the decorations of a living room.

In Living Memory is a bittersweet dialogue between father and daughter, challenging traditional notions of remembering and forgetting. This video explores the loving and sometimes stormy relationship between the two and explores the father's life as an artist and communist, who at age 93, is losing his memory.

While rehearsing a sexual assault scene, a pair of actors form a connection they’ll be forced to reconfigure once filming begins.