Film Categories: Society

  • Farzana

    Inspired by a true story, Farzana (2021) is a short narrative film which revolves around the relationship of two middle-aged women and how they navigate their work in the home. Charmaine is a psychotherapist who works from home, and she hires Nasreen as a domestic worker to help her maintain her household. Nasreen is a recent migrant who is dealing with financial precarity. When there is a crisis in Nasreen’s family, she asks for assistance from Charmaine, but lack of trust between the two women results in hostility and conflict. We see all of this through the eyes of Zinnia,…

  • PANDALAND: Making IT Count

    “PANDALAND: Making IT Count” is about how children become engaged and learn to grapple with big social issues. The filmmaker accomplishes this by encouraging playful exploration in a multi-media installation of 70+ toy pandas she created in her neighbourhood. The vibe of the film is lighthearted and optimistic. As the children initiate an election on behalf of the pandas, their experience embodies community building, demonstrates acts of civic engagement and conveys the important message that, by working together, even young children can effect change. The film is a life-affirming tribute to kids’ compassion and the birth of their activism! This…

  • Shoes Off

    Shoes Off is a story about a Brazilian immigrant who becomes the subject matter of an artist’s canvas in Brooklyn. The film explores the themes of the queer diaspora beyond the family trauma trope in immigrant stories through the lenses of danger and desire. Shoes Off blends together its influence from the aesthetics and tropes of DIY porn, thrillers, and realistic dramas. Shoes Off is the portrayal of the challenges, pleasures, and adventures of what a queer immigrant experience could be, based on true stories. Shoes Off depicts how vulnerable and unique the queer experience can be in a search…

  • Atmospheric Arrivals

    This film is at once a living archive/polytemporal memory bank and a love letter to my other selves. I consider the act of revisiting my personal archives a time travelling practice and incorporating this into my films is an exercise in making said practice legible to others. “Atmospheric Arrivals” is about home and the (im)possibility of return. The “atmospheric arrival” captures a means of coming into being through memory and imagination; by reaching across spacetimes to “fetch” parts of the self that may exist in elsewheres.

  • Matin Dans Une Foret de Pins (Morning in the Pine Forest)

    The lives of six young people unfold in a journey through different worlds revealed and interwoven, where the boundaries between documentary and fiction, reality and dream cease to exist. The volatile and seductive landscape of urban and rural Latvia was treated as a rich context for the complex relationships one has with the world – inviting the viewer to come upon the questions that bind us in our common need to understand our humanness. This film is based on the lives of HELENA, EVA, JANKA, GUNTIS, ANNA and GALC.

  • Only the crow knows him / Seul le corbeau le connaît

    The misrepresentation of images through the story of an old man who lives in the street. One day he sees photographs of himself in an art gallery. He sees himself portrayed as an old homeless man. He has no history, no childhood, no mystery.

  • This is a Crisis

    An anonymous bureaucrat traipses around the City of Toronto, repurposing hostile architecture as their playground. Featuring spliced audio of former mayor John Tory’s victory speeches from 2014, 2018, and 2022 municipal election nights, bleak scenes are juxtaposed with a heavy-handed narrative of progress and inclusion. Documented on January 31, 2023—weeks before Tory would resign—this public performance and accompanying video artwork offer a critique of procedural fetishism, the surveillance and criminalization of poverty, and what cities become when they leave the most marginalized behind.

  • Hier und Dort

    Since I arrived here in Germany from Korea, I always find myself in the unlearning situation. While I encounter completely different cultures, languages, situations, I have had to throw away a lot of what I have already learned and at the same time take away a lot of what I need to learn anew. I am already a learned person, but at the same time an unlearned person here.

  • Toronto, Old and New

    Allegedly “bursting at the seams” for over a century now, Toronto is cacophonous, cosmopolitan, and often confusing. A landscape shaped by generations of dreams and desires, the metropolis bears the overlapping imprints of capitalism, colonialism, conflict, community and celebration. Juxtaposing found footage, paper ephemera, and newly shot 16mm material, “Toronto, Old and New” explores the relationship between past and present in Canada’s largest city.

  • The Blactor

    On route to a “gansta” audition, a young Black actress must prove to a cop that she’s not the role she’s auditioning for.