Far from home and struggling to reconcile their Native identities with non-Native culture, Ray and Jolene negotiate a growing attraction as they're drawn together, in this reflective exploration of urban Aboriginal identity.
Social & External
The people behind it
Melanie McLaren
Jolene Peltier
Duane Murray
Ray Morrin
Lorne Cardinal
Max Cardinal
Cheri Maracle
Linda Cardinal
Jeff Geddis
John
Mike McPhaden
Kevin
Various lives intersect over the course of 48 hours in Canada's largest and most culturally diverse city.
Brother and sister Enrique and Rosa flee persecution at home in Guatemala and journey north, through Mexico and on to the United States, with the dream of starting a new life.
At the end of the 1940s, Lebanon is sliding towards a devastating conflict. Catholic siblings Emilie and Emir decide to leave for Brazil. Aboard the ship to their new home, Emilie falls in love with Omar, a Muslim merchant. For an enraged and jealous Emir, the relationship is intolerable. As the story unfolds against the backdrop of the majestic rainforest, Emir’s actions and the choice that Emilie subsequently makes lead to disastrous consequences.
After the disappearance of a young scientist on a business trip, his son and wife struggle to cope, only to make a bizarre discovery years later – one that may bring him home.
In this feature drama, a Canadian Indigenous youth attempts to find a place for himself. He faces culture shock as the educational system teaches him to be a white man and tries to find a way of life more meaningful to his Indigenous culture and ancestry.
The film revolves around a Chinese man who returns to New Zealand following the death of his wife and begins to discover that she harbored a number of secrets.
Set in the late 90s, Rustic Oracle is a dramatic feature about Ivy, an 8-year-old girl trying to understand what happened to her big sister who has vanished from their small Mohawk community. With minimal clues, Ivy and her mother Susan embark on an unwelcome journey to find Heather which will ultimately bring the pair closer together despite challenging circumstances. Behind the story of desperation, told through the eyes of a child, lies one of hope, growth, awakening and love.
On a summer day in the 1950s, a native girl watches the countryside go by from the backseat of a car. A woman at her kitchen table sings a lullaby in her Cree language. When the girl arrives at her destination, she undergoes a transformation that will turn the woman’s gentle voice into a howl of anger and pain.
Seas the Day: The Sailing Movie is a genre-defying documentary that blends real-world adventure with deeply human storytelling. It transcends typical sailing documentaries by blending docu-fiction with a narrative inspired by Joseph Campbell’s classic The Hero's Journey. Directed by Ryan Luskin, an anthropologist and teacher, the film follows his family's quest across sixteen countries, learning life skills from diverse cultures.
An Anishinaabe man is restless and isolated in the city of Minneapolis, haunted by an ominous sense that he doesn’t belong. Shinaab eerily portrays Indigenous people’s dislocation and alienation on their own land as sinister and enigmatic forces.
A healing and poetic essay on our intergenerational relationship with water.
1988 CBC docudrama on Canada's role in WW1. Terence McKenna tours the Battlefields of Ypres, the Somme, Vimy Ridge and Paschendaele. Actors portray several Canadian soldiers in WW1 in re-enactments based on their memoirs, diaries and letters.
A detective, goes from Spain to the Venezuelan Guajira, hired by the king of Wuayuus, to protect her, Niña de Maracaibo (wife of King, who belongs to an aristocratic family in the city) the detective tries to discover a conspiracy greater than initially imagined. Where he is only one piece in a plot which mixes smuggling, power struggles and tribal magic. The clash of two opposite visions, the 'Western' Spanish researcher, and the 'native' the Wuayuu original owners of Caribbean, converts this format film apparently 'police' in a thesis film revealing the mystery of the still existing singular South American identity.
A young mime and a fledgling Indian meet in the forest and spend some time together.
ETERNAL ASHES tells the story of a mother, Ana and her daughter, Elena. Although they are separated, in the space and time they remain united forever. The people and the millenarian culture of Yanomami are the framework of this story about the unbreakable bonds of filiations. After an accident in the furious flow of the mythical Orinoco River, in the fifties, Ana was considered dead. Elena as an adult and facing the negligible possibility that her mother is alive decides to leave to the Amazon to search her. ETERNAL ASHES is a story of filiations, poetry, wisdom and especially of humanity.
Cliff receives an unusual 18th birthday gift from his younger sister — marijuana, alcohol, a subway token and the mission to lose his virginity. This results in Cliff meeting a young street hustler named Butch. At first, as Butch introduces Cliff to gay street life in Toronto, Cliff is excited by his new relationship. But as the two grow closer, he finds that Butch has problems, including drug addiction, that are cause for serious concern.
Rose is the story of a sixteen-year-old pregnant, Indigenous teen who is pulled from her community and placed in a church to be overseen in her last months of pregnancy. When she delivers her child, it will be taken from her and put into a Canadian home by decree of an Indian Agent, Mr. Byrne. Rose has a secret and will not tell anyone the identity of the baby's father - not even her family. It is later revealed that the father of her child is a young Mohawk man, named Michael, who wants to keep the child in the community.
Robinson Crusoe flees Britain on a ship after killing his friend over the love of Mary. A fierce ocean storm wrecks his ship and leaves him stranded by himself on an uncharted island. Left to fend for himself, Crusoe seeks out a tentative survival on the island, until he meets Friday, a tribesman whom he saves from being sacrificed. Initially, Crusoe is thrilled to finally have a friend, but he has to defend himself against the tribe who uses the island to sacrifice tribesman to their gods. During time their relationship changes from master-slave to a mutual respected friendship despite their difference in culture and religion.
When an academic unearths a forgotten history, residents of the small township of Pukekohe, including kaumātua who have never told their personal stories before, confront its deep and dark racist past.
A father tries to save the soul of his daughter, lost in darkness.
A jazz musician seeks refuge from a lynch mob on a remote island, where he meets a hostile game warden and the young object of his attentions.
A street smart runner develops an intense rivalry with an equally ambitious wealthy young athlete.
Mara is a young creative writing professor struggling with problems in her marriage to an experimental musician. One day, she runs into Matt, a charismatic, free-spirited author from her past, when he wanders onto her university campus. Bonded by their shared interests, the two gradually become closer. When Mara’s husband unexpectedly cancels plans to drive her to an out-of-town conference, Matt accompanies Mara on the trip instead. Along the way, the tension surrounding their undefined relationship slowly grows.
An optimistic, talented teen clings to a huge secret: she's homeless and living on a school bus. When tragedy strikes, can she learn to accept a helping hand?
During the 1976 Soweto uprising, a white school teacher's life and values are threatened when he asks questions about the death of a young black boy who died in police custody.
A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.
When a rebellious teen embarks on a solo summer journey to connect with her roots, she finds herself in a new world, geared up for the ride of her life, and discovers she had the drive in her all along.
Follows the life of Native Canadian Saul Indian Horse as he survives residential school and life amongst the racism of the 1970s. A talented hockey player, Saul must find his own path as he battles stereotypes and alcoholism.
Years after her son's suicide, a woman longs to confront both the past and a friend of his who took his business idea.
An aimless young man who is scalping tickets, gambling and drinking, agrees to coach a Little League team from the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago as a condition of getting a loan from a friend.
Young Cedric Errol and his widowed mother live in genteel poverty in 1880s Brooklyn after the death of his father. Cedric's grandfather, the Earl of Dorincourt, has long ago disowned his son for marrying an American. But after the death of the Earl's remaining son, he decides to accept Cedric as his heir.
At the end of WWII, Jimmy Picard, a Native American Blackfoot who fought in France, suffers from unexplainable symptoms and is admitted to a military hospital. When doctors suspect schizophrenia, an eccentric psychoanalyst takes up the case and starts a conversation with the veteran.
A young girl lives in the Outer Hebrides in a small village in the years just before WWI. Isolated and hard by the shore, her life takes a dramatic change when a terrible tragedy befalls her.
An Arab surgeon living in Tel Aviv discovers a dark secret about his wife in the aftermath of a suicide bombing.
In the 1990s, an immigrant single mother raises her teenage son in the Canadian suburbs, determined to provide a better life for him than the one she left behind in South Korea.
Gentle and broken, a homeless man fights others on video for money but soon finds comfort in an unlikely friend and the lost diary of a young girl.
The story of a young writer's transformation when her past invades her present.
Conman Robert Freegard poses as an undercover MI5 agent and kidnaps countless victims amidst a high-stakes manhunt, until the woman who fell for him brings him to justice.
After her stay-at-home husband leaves her, a workaholic lawyer finds that she is not completely up to the tasks of caring for her young son, ailing father and household all by herself.
In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.