Down to the Dirt

In her feature documentary Seguridad, Newfoundland-based filmmaker Tamara Segura—once named “Cuba’s youngest soldier” in a militia publicity stunt—portrays her troubled relationship with her father in the context of the Cuban Revolution. When Segura accepts a scholarship to study film in Canada, the move offers crucial distance from her alcoholic father. After four years, she returns to Cuba hoping to make amends. But her father’s sudden death just days after her arrival forces Segura to explore his troubled past and the role Cuba’s highly militarized system played in his downfall. Through a series of deeply personal on-camera interviews with her immediate family, Segura unearths long-held secrets that ultimately tell a story of resilience and profound love between family members. Seguridad artfully weaves a lifetime’s worth of still photographs into its intimate narrative, which offers a rare glimpse into the inner lives of Cubans in the post-revolutionary era.

Ginok Song, a South Korean artist living and painting in a small fishing village in Newfoundland, explores what home is, who she was, and where she is now. Ginok examines the choice to become an artist as a need to explore self-expression, an intimate journey to know herself through the female gaze.

When James Downey returns home to Newfoundland for his mother’s funeral, he is faced with all the haunting family issues he thought he had left behind. He channeled his own inner demons from an abusive father into being a police officer but his cousin Danny’s childhood trauma has exploded into a cycle of drugs, crime and violence. James must confront his tortured past, decide who he really is, and deal with his cousin before it’s too late.

The story of an endangered Newfoundland community and the struggles of one man determined to resist its extinction.

Inspired by true events. When Daisy's husband is murdered, the news brings on a sudden, traumatic labor. Now, reliant on medication following a complicated birth, Daisy depends on her best friend Louise to help care for her son. But her husband’s death has triggered a strange series of events, and she soon finds herself in danger. Will she be able to uncover the truth in time to save herself and her new baby?

One fateful night, after leaving a bar in his home town of Nova Scotia, musician Scott Jones was subjected to a vicious and targeted attack which left him paralysed and in a wheelchair. Despite Scott knowing that this was a homophobic hate crime, the assault was not treated as such in the courts, or by the media. As Scott rebuilds his life, he is forced to make sense of the way the incident was handled while also struggling to make peace with his attacker. Taking place across the three years following this life-changing ordeal, close friend and filmmaker Laura Marie Wayne gracefully charts the impact of the attack on Scott’s life, both physically and mentally. The resulting documentary is a tender, heartbreaking and inspiring testament to one man’s strength and resilience.

Natalie, a gifted New York photographer, has a troubled past reflected in her art. When she struggles to make ends meet in the city, her agent, arranges an assignment in Boston for a considerable sum of money. Unable to turn it down in her dire straits, Natalie takes the job -- only to find that her estranged gay brother, Roy, is the employer. Roy wants to mend their broken past, but must convince her to stay long enough to do so.

Life on the Rock never seemed easy, but for Mitsy it is especially rough. The teenager has been abandoned by her mother, a particularly unfit parent prone to both the bottle and the sex trade. She is left to be brought up by her mercurial grandmother Bride, who is well-meaning but oppressively suffocating. Mitsy's dreams for the future hinge on her desire to be a hairdresser, but her current emotional well-being revolves around a wee dog named Sparky, an unwanted canine misfit to whom she becomes hopelessly attached. After Bride agrees to let Mitsy take the dog in as a pet, the teen tries desperately to create a happy, safe place for Sparky to thrive.

When a boy from Darcy's cadet corps insists she attend the Trampoline Social, she sets off for a dramatic evening of self-acceptance and sweet backflips.

On the shores of a small fishing village lives a lonely settlement of men - capturing and domesticating otherworldly creatures that were never meant to be tamed.

Chronicles ten weeks with Lauda - a pioneering youth ensemble within the internationally renowned Shallaway Youth Choir, one of only a handful of choirs in the world to embrace all neurotypes. As the choristers prepare for their end of season concert, they reveal the joyful harmony they’ve found together while navigating a world not always tuned to their rhythm.

It's 1986, Shannon Crane means to be bound for a future she cannot know, on a day filled with possibility and hope. In her 7th grade class, Shannon has to reckon with the ordinary calamity of being herself after a simultaneous incident of being bullied, is caught between the extraordinary catastrophic event of the space challenger disaster, leaving a debris of searching, questioning.

Casey's mother ensures her daughter receives the education, protection, and loving care little girls need. But an altercation with some local schoolgirls reveals that Casey's life is based on a lie.

A young women craving attention in her relationship, finds a lump in her breast.

With little more than a 16-mm camera and a bedrock love of place, renegade filmmaker Mike Jones broke the trail for Newfoundland’s cultural renaissance. Through never-before-seen footage of the comedic chaos that was CODCO, Smash & Grab: The Rebel Lens of Mike Jones summons this chapter of Canada’s hilarious history in a joyful journey of rediscovery featuring Mary Walsh, Cathy Jones, Rick Mercer and more.

In a dystopian future where the air is unbreathable and all citizens must wear elaborate masks in order to live, one young scientist fights to win his lover by defying the state and seeing her face.