Film Categories: Canada

  • the air we breathe

    the air we breathe is an experimental documentary that thinks through the complexities of air pollution by weaving together themes of environmental catastrophe, environmental racism, cultural and political shifts, and conspiracy. Combining research into air pollution along with personal storytelling and speculative imaginings, this project deeply considers the complicated ways in which our air impacts us: from the way that smells travel through it and the memories they evoke; to the physical impacts of pollutants through shared inhalation; to the ways in which the air serves as a metaphor of connection in a cultural sense.

  • The English Teacher

    English teacher Kofi Frimpong is starting classes once again for immigrants at a local language school in Toronto. Before starting the lesson, Taranjit Bains interrupts him to ask where the instructor is. Unsatisfied that Mr. Frimpong is teaching the class, Taranjit does not return. This isn’t the first time Mr. Frimpong’s legitimacy to teach the subject has been questioned, but it eats away at him nonetheless.

  • Mango Lemon Soda

    After spraining her ankle fleeing a terrible date, Zahrah is forced to spend an evening with her estranged ex, Tyler.

  • the smallest steps

    What does it take to have a voice? For women whose voices are often suppressed, the journey is full of challenges. Many quit along the way. But in Ottawa, Ontario, two law students and two survivors of violence have decided to take a stand and join the anti-violence movement. The only trouble is, they don’t know how to be activists. In their homes and on the streets, they take their first activist steps while veteran activists provide historical context to the movement. If they can overcome the personal and political barriers that threaten to derail them, they will join a…

  • The Translation is Approximate

    This video focuses a conversation that Naqvi witnessed between her aunt and a domestic worker over financial matters. For many reasons — the ambivalence of the situation, the respective socioeconomic positions of the two women involved in the scene, and the very nature of the recording, which careened between documentary and voyeurism — these images have long haunted Naqvi. In the Translation is Approximate (2021), Naqvi retrieves the original footage that she shot in 2013 and traces back her thoughts about what motivated her to revisit this material. This short video both provides insight into her approach and fundamentally questions…

  • 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,…

  • Modulations

    A short film about memory, dislocation and cultural identity.

  • Light and Land

    Lingering somewhere between fantasy and realism, this futuristic documentary underscores atmospheric phenomenon within mysterious environmental incongruence.

  • 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.

  • Lines Drawn

    Shot in two downtown Toronto parks over the course of the pandemic, Lines Drawn looks at various measures of persuasion, containment and control that were brought to bear over the course of the City’s attempts to curtail the spread of COVID-19. Throughout the pandemic, space was defined by how the social bond was re-formed and which barriers were designed for mutual and directional protection. What are the shapes of the pandemic and how did they shape our interactions with each other? Supported by Media City Film Festival’s Chrysalis Fellowship