Inhabitants

For millennia, Native Americans successfully stewarded and shaped their landscapes, but centuries of colonization have disrupted their ability to maintain their traditional land management practices. From deserts, coastlines, forests, mountains, and prairies, Native communities across the US are restoring their ancient relationships with the land. As the climate crisis escalates these time-tested practices of North America's original inhabitants are becoming increasingly essential in a rapidly changing world.

Colebrook: A Place of Healing & Learning

Colebrook Blackwood Reconciliation Park is where the Colebrook Training Home once stood. It is now a permanent memorial for the Aboriginal children of the “Stolen Generation” and their families.

NUKED

The US detonated 67 nuclear weapons over the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands during the Cold War, the consequences of which still reverberate down four generations to today. "NUKED," is a timely new feature documentary focussing on the human victims of the nuclear arms race, tracing the displaced Bikinian's ongoing struggle for justice and survival even as climate change poses a new existential threat. Using carefully restored archival footage to resurrect contemporaneous islanders’ voices and juxtaposing these with the full, awesome fury of the nuclear detonations, NUKED starkly contrasts the official record with the lived experience of the Bikinians themselves, serving as an important counterpoint to this summer’s Oppenheimer.

Je vous salue salope : La misogynie au temps du numérique

This documentary by Léa Clermont-Dion and Guylaine Maroist plunges us into the vortex of online misogyny and documents hatred towards women. This bleak opus, reminiscent of a psychological thriller, follows four women across two continents: former President of the Italian parliament Laura Boldrini, former Democratic representative Kiah Morris, French actor and YouTuber Marion Séclin, and Donna Zuckerberg, a specialist in online violence against women and the sister of Facebook’s founder. This tour de force reveals the devastating effects such unapologetic hatred has on victims, and brings to light the singular objective of cyber-misogyny: to silence women who shine. Some targets of cyber-violence will crumble under the crystallizing force of the click. Others, proud warriors, will stand tall and refuse to be silenced.

Falas da Terra

'Falas da Terra' sheds light on the plurality and the struggle of the indigenous people for the right to exist, in a historical rescue of valuing their cultures.

They Are Sacred

Following young Anders and his father, Dr. Grant Bruno, of the Samson Cree Nation, this documentary gives viewers unique access to the world of an autistic child, and to follow his father’s journey to bring back traditional First Peoples perspectives in our contemporary world.

Planas, Testimonio de un Etnocidio

A documentary on the massacre of Planas in the Colombian east plains in 1970. An Indigenous community formed a cooperative to defend their rights from settlers and colonists, but the government organized a military operation to protect the latter and foreign companies.

La Fille du cratère

A woman with a deep love of the land, Yolande Simard Perrault sees her life as having been shaped by a planetary upheaval in Charlevoix, Quebec, millions of years ago. As enduring as the Canadian Shield, she’s a woman of strength and spirit, a child of the crater left by the meteor’s impact. This documentary portrays a determined woman who’s the reflection of a land created on an immense scale. She was the creative and life partner of filmmaker Pierre Perrault, who gave up everything to be by her side. The film charts the influence of her unquenchable dreams and her contribution to the building of a people’s collective memory. In a stream of images and words, Simard Perrault recounts the splendours of the landscape and the people who shaped it. Generous and boundless, she embarks on a quest for identity that nurtures and perpetuates the oeuvre of the man who breathed new life into Quebec cinema.

The Executive Empress

The Executive Empress explores the entrepreneurial lives of several Florida women, who have turned their unique passions into successful businesses.

The Land is the Culture: A Case for BC Indian Land Claims

"A documentary film which looks at the issue of British Columbia Native land claims and how the aboriginals link their culture to the land, which has been stolen by the dominant white culture of North America. In the film, the argument is presented that the lands have been taken from the Natives without any clear treaty agreements and how attempts had been made to wipe out Native culture through the Residential School system. " Produced by the Union of BC Indian Chiefs in 1975.

Warrior: The Life of Leonard Peltier

An intimate exploration of the circumstances surrounding the incarceration of Native American activist Leonard Peltier, convicted of murder in 1977, with commentary from those involved, including Peltier himself.

First Daughter and the Black Snake

The “Prophecy of the 7th Fire” says a “black snake” will bring destruction to the earth. For Winona LaDuke, the “black snake” is oil trains and pipelines. When she learns that Canadian-owned Enbridge plans to route a new pipeline through her tribe’s 1855 Treaty land, she and her community spring into action to save the sacred wild rice lakes and preserve their traditional indigenous way of life. Launching an annual spiritual horse ride along the proposed pipeline route, speaking at community meetings and regulatory hearings. Winona testifies that the pipeline route follows one of historical and present-day trauma. The tribe participates in the pipeline permitting process, asserting their treaty rights to protect their natural resources. LaDuke joins with her tribe and others to demand that the pipelines’ impact on tribal people’s resources be considered in the permitting process.

Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy

Follow filmmaker Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers as she creates an intimate portrait of her community and the impacts of the substance use and overdose epidemic. Witness the change brought by community members with substance-use disorder, first responders and medical professionals as they strive for harm reduction in the Kainai First Nation.

The Pimp’s World

The world of pimping in early 1980s America offers a rare, unfiltered glimpse into a controversial underground lifestyle. Through exclusive interviews with the notorious figure “Harold” and his associates—Alice, Lori, and Karen—the film provides a nuanced exploration of the lives of pimps and streetwalkers and the ways their paths intertwine. With a focus on both the allure and inherent dangers of this lifestyle, the documentary reaches a sombre climax, shedding light on the tragic murder of Alice Franklin, one of Harold’s streetwalkers, later that same year.

Foster Child

Gil Cardinal searches for his natural family and an understanding of the circumstances that led to his becoming a foster child. An important figure in the history of Canadian Indigenous filmmaking, Gil Cardinal was born to a Métis mother but raised by a non-Indigenous foster family, and with this auto-biographical documentary he charts his efforts to find his biological mother and to understand why he was removed from her. Considered a milestone in documentary cinema, it addressed the country’s internal colonialism in a profoundly personal manner, winning a Special Jury Prize at Banff and multiple international awards.

Documentário Brasil Tupinambá

Through the Repellent Fence: A Land Art Film

The film follows Postcommodity, an interdisciplinary arts collective comprised of Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martinez and Kade L. Twist, who put land art in a tribal context. The group bring together a community to construct the Repellent Fence, a two-mile long ephemeral monument “stitching” together the US and Mexico.

Jordan River Anderson, The Messenger

The story of a young boy forced to spend all five years of his short life in hospital while the federal and provincial governments argued over which was responsible for his care, as well as the long struggle of Indigenous activists to force the Canadian government to enforce “Jordan’s Principle” — the promise that no First Nations children would experience inequitable access to government-funded services again.

There's Something in the Water

Elliot Page brings attention to the injustices and injuries caused by environmental racism in his home province, in this urgent documentary on Indigenous and African Nova Scotian women fighting to protect their communities, their land, and their futures.

Now Is the Time

When internationally renowned Haida carver Robert Davidson was only 22 years old, he carved the first new totem pole on British Columbia’s Haida Gwaii in almost a century. On the 50th anniversary of the pole’s raising, Haida filmmaker Christopher Auchter steps easily through history to revisit that day in August 1969, when the entire village of Old Massett gathered to celebrate the event that would signal the rebirth of the Haida spirit.