Still grappling with the grief stemming from her mother’s suicide decades ago, filmmaker Min Sook Lee re-examines her childhood and her family’s history with a new lens. In her incredibly candid interviews, she doesn’t shy away from the tough questions, leading to the surfacing of uncomfortable truths.

In this poignant documentary that brilliantly weaves together her family’s story with Korea’s political climate, Lee finds a bridge from the personal to the universal, tracing the complicated journey from grief to healing.

In a not so distant future, everyone is forced to end their life at 50, in order to save the planet. This weighs especially heavily on young artist Kiah (Kiera Jang), as her mother (Sandra Oh) prepares for this end of life ritual.

Watching the resilience and determination of ants, Thao Lam sees parallels with the story of her own perilous journey from Vietnam to Canada.

Azra (Kaur), a young Queer Pakistani-Canadian woman, has long felt disconnected from her mother, Mariam (Bucha). Reuniting in Pakistan for her father’s funeral in 1999, flashbacks to 30 years earlier show a young Mariam (played in a Canadian Screen Award-winning dual role by Kaur) falling in love with Azra’s father, Hassan (Haq). Jumping back and forth between these two coming-of-age stories, the connections between mother and daughter become more and more clear – but will they realise this in time to save their relationship? 

Sumptuously capturing the feel of a Bollywood film while telling a relatable cross-continental story, Fawzia Mirza’s impressive debut feature is an instant classic.

“Mirza has created a film bursting with creative energy and distinctive aesthetic sensibilities.” – Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter

Billy Tipton, a 20th Century jazz musician became a trans icon after his death, and his legacy continues to be carried forward by trans artists to this day. Featuring a unique documentary structure, the film uses an audition session for a proposed biopic about Tipton as a jumping off point for a group of contemporary trans artists to explore what Tipton has meant to them, and to share stories about their own lives and experiences.

Also featuring interviews with Tipton’s family, Aisling Chin-Yee and Chase Joynt’s remarkable tribute to a misunderstood artist was named one of Canada’s Top 10 in 2020.

"Approaching Tipton’s story with the free hand of an improvised jazz set, No Ordinary Man is an elegant riff on a classic progression that arrives at something transcendent." - Jude Dry, Indiewire

At the edge of the Yangtze River, not far from the Three Gorges Dam, young men and women take up employment on a cruise ship, where they confront rising waters and a radically changing China.

A precocious 9-year-old with a wild imagination grows up amid her traditional Chinese immigrant family in Vancouver.

The members of the Afghan women’s boxing team are determined to compete on the world stage, and all share a dream of representing their country in the Olympics. Constantly having to deal with political pressure, lack of funding, and improper training facilities, these young women still manage to break through the barriers before them in their fight to keep their boxing careers alive.

This powerful documentary follows the boxers’ lives both in and out of the ring, with interviews with their coaches and family members that not only show what they’ve had to overcome, but also the long journey that still lies ahead of them.

Winner of the Canadian Screen Award for Best Short Documentary.

At Montreal’s Sir George Williams University in 1969, a student protest against the administration’s institutional racism became a 14-day occupation. Shum’s first feature documentary looks at an important moment in Black history. Winner of the Women in Film Artistic Merit Award at the Vancouver International Film Festival.

After a string of flops, Charles Dickens (Dan Stevens of Downton Abbey) finds inspiration from his own life to write his most famous work, A Christmas Carol. With a tight deadline and doubt over how successful a Christmas book can be, Dickens must work around the clock and ends up living out the novel’s most famous scenes in his own study, in order to find the story that would come to be beloved by millions.

Also featuring screen legend Christopher Plummer as Ebenezer Scrooge, The Man Who Invented Christmas is a fascinating look behind the scenes of the creation of a classic and beloved novel, and a charming portrait of one of the most famous authors of all time.

“A surprisingly fresh movie about a story we all know very well.” - Peter Howell, The Toronto Star

Filmmaker Ann Marie Fleming takes a tour around the world to investigate the incredible history of her great-grandfather, Long Tack Sam. As a world-renowned magician and acrobat, Long’s travels and exploits in the early 20th century had largely been forgotten. On a mission to uncover and restore his legacy, Fleming discovers all the barriers set in his path and the ways he overcame them on his way to becoming one of the most successful vaudeville acts of all time.

This whimsical and thought-provoking documentary offers an incredible insight into a forgotten icon from a fascinating era of theatrical history.

In 1914, the SS Komagata Maru set out on a voyage to transport Indian immigrants to Canada. On May 23 of that year, the ship arrived in Vancouver with 376 Sikh, Muslim and Hindu passengers on board. Many of the men were veterans of the British Indian Army and believed that it was their right as British subjects to settle anywhere in the Empire they had fought to defend and expand. They were wrong – they were stopped from coming into Canada by the Continuous Journey Regulation of 1908, which excluded Indians and South Asians from being able to enter the country.  

This inventive docudrama explores the exclusionary politics, which kept the Indian passengers of the Komagata Maru sequestered at sea for over two months in this infamous standoff.  

A story of immigration and injustice, this beautifully crafted film shows historical footage in a way never seen before.

A high school girl’s crush doesn’t go exactly as planned in this clever subversion of the high school rom com genre.

Jason Jones and Samatha Bee (who won the Canadian Comedy Award for her role) lead a powerhouse cast in this outrageously funny found footage comedy. When Gord Cooper (Jones) buys a state of the art VHS camera from a neighbour (Foley), the stage is set for a Christmas film like no other!

Set in 1985, Cooper’s Camera captures the candid hilarity of the Coopers’ holidays as everything descends into total chaos. Gord and his wife Bev (Bee) attempt to keep it together while their son Teddy films everything with the new camera and a cast of wild relatives descend on their home, including moustache and mullet-wearing brother-in-law Nick (Beaver, in a show-stealing performance), Gord’s estranged brother Tim (Keleghan) and the chain-smoking and bitter Aunt Gert (Eastwood).

Get to know one of Canada’s strangest and funniest cinematic families in a film The Globe and Mail said was “destined to become a holiday classic” after its 2008 premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Sid (Debargo Sanyal) is a trans woman whose life takes a left turn when the teenage son she didn’t know she had turns up at her doorstep, in this heartwarming, feel-good film that defies the conventions of the family drama.

In 2016, scientists declared that the Earth has entered a new geological era, one that is entirely the consequence of humanity’s abuse of the planet. This documentary goes around the world illustrating the variety of ways that humanity has affected its environment.

In Kenya, authorities set fire to mounds of elephant tusks to protest the illegal ivory trade, resulting in a devastating display of the impact of poaching. In Russia and Germany, mining operations transform the land into an otherworldly wasteland. The unfathomable scale of the images created by these moments are equal parts beautiful and disturbing.

Following Manufactured Landscapes and Watermark, photographer Edward Burtynsky and filmmakers Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier conclude their award-winning trilogy with an urgent message to all the citizens of the world to see the consequences of our actions, before it’s too late.

An awkwardly humorous film about a lonely female security guard (Reid Asselstine) at a deteriorating strip mall, whose encounter with a charming bartender from the mall (Darrel Gamotin) starts a chain reaction of unexpected consequences for them both. The film won five awards at film festivals around the world.

This stunning second feature from Anthony Shim follows a Korean single mother who moves to Canada with her young son in the early 1990s, following the death of her husband. As she struggles to make ends meet and provide the best life possible for her son, she has to contend with his changing attitudes towards her, and towards their Korean culture. 

A profoundly affecting drama about the immigrant experience, Riceboy Sleeps premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival where it won the Platform Prize, and was named to their 2022 Canada’s Top Ten list. It also won the award for Best Original Screenplay at the Canadian Screen Awards.

Grace (Bang) and Carter (Scarpellino) are both having a rough night. Carter, a centre for the Tampa Bay Lightning, has just been told by his coach that he’s being demoted to the minor leagues, and he’s desperately hoping to get traded. Meanwhile, after being passed over for a promotion then ditched by her roommate and exiled from her apartment, Grace is forced into a night out against her will. When the two cross paths, they seem to be exactly what the other needs, and they set out on an all-night journey through downtown Toronto.

Driven by amazing chemistry between the two leads, Stay the Night is a quiet and touching adventure that showcases both the beauty and the loneliness of Canada’s biggest city.

“A modern-day Before Sunrise” – Chris Knight, The National Post

In the face of tremendous social pressure to back down, Ranjit, a farmer in rural India, pursues a conviction against the men who raped his 13-year-old daughter. Through the intimate, powerful story of this family’s efforts to get justice, the film shines a light on gender-based violence in a country where rape is frequently reported and rarely convicted. 

To Kill a Tiger was nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, and earned TIFF’s award for the Best Canadian Film of the 2022 festival. 

Pahuja’s film pulls no punches in its determination to help bring down the long-standing thinking that has compounded the cruelties faced by countless women in Kiran’s unfortunate position. – Peter Sobczynski, RogerEbert.com