CREATURE OF GOD

I'll be your mirror

The artist Johanna Faust is about to leave her children to finally devote herself to her art again. A vague memory comes to her mind: Didn't her grandmother do the same thing, with terrible consequences? The intimate road movie tells of lost mothers and abandoned children, of the temptations and the price of self-fulfilment, of the abysses of motherhood and of the deep longing for another life.

Roadz of Life

A traumatic injury and disability, the filmmaker is also the subject, trying to find his way out of a coma like state. Searching for answers, he begins to interview strangers also experiencing extreme life circumstances.

Capturing the Friedmans

An Oscar nominated documentary about a middle-class American family who is torn apart when the father Arnold and son Jesse are accused of sexually abusing numerous children. Director Jarecki interviews people from different sides of this tragic story and raises the question of whether they were rightfully tried when they claim they were innocent and there was never any evidence against them.

Drunk on Too Much Life

The filmmakers' 21-year-old daughter journeys from locked-down psych wards and diagnostic labels toward expansive worlds of creativity, connection, and greater meaning. Featuring insights from trauma experts and others, the film challenges the widespread idea that mental illness should be understood purely in biological terms, revealing the myriad ways that madness has meaning beyond brain chemistry.

Boy Scout's Honor

8-year-old Aaron Averhart was just a year shy of being able to move up from Cub Scout to Boy Scout when he received a special request from an admired Boy Scout leader, William (Bill) Sheehan. As Aaron rose up the Boy Scout ranks, he slowly became aware of Sheehan’s grooming techniques and began to realize he had much more sinister intentions in store for him. If Aaron’s parents had known that since the 1920s the Boy Scouts of America had been keeping hidden files on dangerous pedophiles in their ranks while failing to warn the public, the police, the scouts, their parents, or even fully removing them from the Boy Scouts program, they would have never allowed young Aaron to be part of such a complicit and corrupt organization.

No Māori Allowed

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 Common Experience

A poetic exploration of the multi-generational affects of Canada's Indian Residential School system, based on the personal trials of Aboriginal playwright Yvette Nolan.

Diameter of the Bomb

Since the renewed Intifada began in 2000, there have been over 75 Palestinian suicide bombings. This is the story of 0ne-the bombing of bus 32 in Jerusalem in June 2002. The film connects the stories of a group of ordinary Israelis-Jews and Arabs. Each of them holds a clue to someone who died that day.

Obaida

OBAIDA, a short film by Matthew Cassel, explores a Palestinian child’s experience of Israeli military arrest. Each year, some 700 Palestinian children undergo military detention in a system where ill-treatment is widespread and institutionalized. For these young detainees, few rights are guaranteed, even on paper. After release, the experience of detention continues to shape and mark former child prisoners’ path forward.

The Devil and Father Amorth

William Friedkin attends an exorcism with Father Gabriele Amorth, as he treats an Italian woman named Cristina for the ninth time. Prior to filming, Cristina had purportedly been experiencing behavioural changes and “fits” that could not be explained by psychiatry, and which became worse during Christian holidays.

Célibat des prêtres, le calvaire de l'Église

Priests, theologians and bishops are increasingly confessing that the majority of clergy no longer keep celibacy. They condemn the institution of the church and its treatment of priests. And they refuse to obey the ecclesiastical laws imposed by the Vatican. They no longer want to keep their private lives secret. Many are calling for an end to compulsory celibacy.

Ik Was Pas 14

Filmmaker Froukje van Wengerden’s 86-year-old grandmother shares a powerful memory from 1944, when she was just 14. As her story unfolds, we see a group of contemporary 14-year-old girls. Their procession of portraits permits the spectator to see simultaneously forward and back, into the future and towards the past. A miraculous testimonial that uses eye contact to focus the viewer inward and evoke unexpected emotions.

Land Without God

An intimate portrait of a family coming to terms with decades of institutional abuse and the impact it has had and is still having on their lives.

Mary Kay Letourneau: Notes On a Scandal

With all the ingredients of a Hollywood movie, this sex scandal shocked, enthralled, and enraged 1990s America. An examination of the affair between Mary Kay Letourneau and her 12-year-old student, Vili Fualaau in 1997.

Reclaiming the Night

In the aftermath of war, an extraordinary professor brings hope to children haunted by trauma-induced nightmares.

Great Photo, Lovely Life

A photojournalist turns her lens on the decades of sexual abuse her family and community experienced at the hands of her grandfather in this unflinching portrait of intergenerational trauma, family secrets, and redemption.

Accused: The Hampstead Paedophile Hoax

Two children accused parents and teachers of leading a paedophilic satanic cult, supposedly headquartered in secret rooms on the school premises. The story was not true. But once the fire was lit, it was hard to put out. Emily Turner’s film considers the real-world impact of an outrageous online conspiracy theory, exploring the importance of truth and the cost of lies.

Todos lo sabían

In 2023, the Ombudsman presented a report on sexual abuse in the Church in Spain. Victims' accounts reached the European Parliament. Among them were the abuse suffered by two brothers at the boarding school where they attended as children.

Ka Ke Ki Ku

This early work from Pierre Perrault, made in collaboration with René Bonnière, chronicles summer activities in the Innu communities of Unamenshipu (La Romaine) and Pakuashipi. Shot by noted cinematographer Michel Thomas-d’Hoste, it documents the construction of a traditional canoe, fishing along the Coucouchou River, a procession marking the Christian feast of the Assumption, and the departure of children for residential schools—an event presented here in an uncritical light. Perrault’s narration, delivered by an anonymous male voice, underscores the film’s outsider gaze on its Indigenous subjects. The film is from Au Pays de Neufve-France (1960), a series produced by Crawley Films, an important early Canadian producer of documentary films.