Becoming Labrador

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.

Josh Crooks is a promising teen hockey star in a sport where Black players like him are chronically underrepresented. Ice Breakers reveals the buried history of a pioneering Black hockey league in Atlantic Canada, as Crooks discovers that his unshakable passion is tied to a rich and remarkable heritage.

Pushing at the limits of non-fiction cinema, A Man Imagined is a bracingly intimate and hallucinatory portrait of a man with schizophrenia surviving amidst urban detritus and decay. Made in close collaboration with 67-year-old Lloyd, this immersive documentary fable follows the jagged path of a decades-long street survivor, across harsh winters and blistering summers, as he sells discarded items to motorists, sleeps in junkyards and lapses into near-psychedelic reveries.

For ancient Mayans, cocoa was as good as gold. For subsistence farmer Eladio Pop, his cocoa crops are the only riches he has to support his wife and 15 children. As he wields his machete with ease, slicing a path to his cocoa trees, the small jungle plot he cultivates in southern Belize remains pristine and wild. His dreams for his children to inherit the land and the traditions of their Mayan ancestors present a familiar challenge. The kids feel their father's philosophies don't fit into a global economy, so they're charting their own course. Rohan Fernando's direction tenderly displays a generational shift, causalities of progress in modern times and a man valiantly protecting an endangered culture. Breathtaking vistas of lush rainforests contrast with the urban dystopia that pulled Pop’s children away from him. Will one child return to carry on a waning way of life

I Am Skylar is the emotionally compelling story of an articulate girl who is thoughtfully defining her future and the woman she is to become. Skylar faces the complexities of being a transgender girl on the cusp of puberty with refreshing honesty and unshakeable dignity.

Written and directed by Jason Young (Animals, Inside Time), Gun Killers takes us into the rural, secluded paradise that retired blacksmiths John and Nancy Little call home. As the tranquil light of a typical day of harvesting vegetables descends into night, we experience the secret work that John and Nancy are sometimes called upon to undertake for the RCMP.

This feature-length documentary chronicles the Sundance ceremony brought to Eastern Canada by William Nevin of the Elsipogtog First Nation of the Mi'kmaq. Nevin learned from Elder Keith Chiefmoon of the Blackfoot Confederacy in Alberta. Under the July sky, participants in the Sundance ceremony go four days without food or water. Then they will pierce the flesh of their chests in an offering to the Creator. This event marks a transmission of culture and a link to the warrior traditions of the past.

While gift shopping at an "enlightened" toy store, a mother and son are out of luck finding the latest Spider-Man and Transformers toys-because all this eccentric shopkeeper proudly sells are Rick Mercer-themed toys that are meant to inspire the next generation of Canadian youth.

This short documentary revisits Mi’kmaq territory, where an iconic moment was captured in 2013—igniting into a symbol of Indigenous resistance and halting fracking exploration on unceded lands.

Often feeling alone in her waking life, the young Alanis Obomsawin found friendship with the Green Horse, a benevolent being she visited regularly in her dreams. Together with other animal spirits, the Green Horse guided Alanis to realize the immensity of the gift of life and the power of kindness.

On the edge of the Arctic Ocean, the community of Taloyoak, Nunavut, is working to feed its families. Soaring grocery prices and the high cost of hunting and travel in the North leave many households facing food insecurity. Nirilaurta tells the story of a community that draws on Inuit culture, land-based knowledge and kinship to nourish their bodies, spirits and one another.

A visually stunning film on acclaimed author David Adams Richards and his connection to one of Canada’s most overlooked yet breathtaking regions.

At the age of 5, Hannah Taylor spotted her first homeless person in the back alleys of Winnipeg. This experience not only troubled her, but it drove her to do nothing less than change the world. The Ladybug Foundation, the charity Hannah helped establish, has raised over a million dollars to date. With her huge heart and can-do attitude, she preaches a simple message of "Share a little of what you have and always care about others."

Part oral history and part visual poem, Miss Campbell: Inuk Teacher is the story of Evelyn Campbell, a trailblazer for an Inuit-led educational system in the small community of Rigolet, Labrador.

Musician Catherine MacLellan—the daughter of Canadian singer/songwriting legend Gene MacLellan—grew up surrounded by her father’s music. He committed suicide when she was 14. The Song and the Sorrow follows Catherine as she journeys to understand her father and face her own struggles with mental illness. Through archival footage and intimate interviews with friends, family members, and musicians who knew and played with Gene—including Anne Murray, Lennie Gallant, and the late Ron Hynes—the film reveals a troubled and loving man who was never at ease with fame or money.