2025 Festival

HÅKON A OLAVSEN

Charlotte Winter

Cinematography: Nik Pilecki

Editing: Álvaro Hernández Blanco

Sarah Hunt

Thomas Van Pottelberge, Timothée Bost, and Benjamin Lecuyer

Brendan James Boyd, Morgan Ermter, Puppet Stuff Canada and Stacy Wegner

Louis Moulin

RICH FARRIS

Benjamin Clavel

Performance: MARTIN MARKI

Director: James Reckseidler

Tom (Ryan Northcott), a rising political star in the Alberta government elected on a $25 a month per person program to end the Depression, is blackmailed by an underage girl. He returns home to small-town to gain financial help from his brother Dan (Lonni Olson) only Dan reveals problems of his own. His wife Grace (Rae Farrer) can’t conceive, while her ill-stricken sister Cecile is the true love of Dan’s life. When Dan confesses a desire to help Grace have a child to Tom, Tom suggests they use a surrogate, which Dan takes to mean Cecile, creating another potential family scandal. The family’s loyalty is torn apart by greed, and desperation sets in when it is learned that Cecile carries a large inheritance, enough for any one to escape with.

Director: Robert J Morrow

Discovering French 50 is a short documentary, focused on Brad & Marie, the owners of a small town bakery.

Director: Ruoyi Dong

In a world that pursues perfection and order, a girl finds herself lost. She faces the roughness of life, the alienation of language, and the cold flood of indifference between people.

Director: Fletcher Martin

a short film that focuses on the anxiety’s that come with being a musician. She struggles along her day to meet the deadline she procrastinated.

Director: Charlotte Winter

When sheep start to go missing from a farm in the middle of the night, a dedicated sheepdog tries to figure out what’s causing them to disappear.

Director: Vincent Cameron Tsekrekos

Leading up to graduation Vincent must decide to follow his passion or pursue the future laid out for him.

Director: Samuel Lawrence

Grant likes Julie and wants to ask her out, but he’s conflicted. He stands at a crossroads. What path will his choices take him on?

Director: Max August

When his older brother is killed after an attempted gas station robbery, Mike sets out to even the score against Sonny, the store owner who killed him.

Director: Jayson Galera

As winter sets in, two best friends (Finn and Leah) share an unbreakable bond. When devastating news shatters their world, they struggle to process their emotions.

Director: Sandra Rachel Hurd

A high school student has gone missing under mysterious circumstances but after Jessie (a 23 year old grieving the recent loss of her grandmother) finds her hiding out in her grandma’s apartment, we start to understand why.

Director: Sasha Gusiev & Artist Avenue

Director: Dezirae Flasch

The hunt of a cat-like creature through a fantasy-like, tropical island.

Director: Dezirae Flasch

A simple animation about a kangaroo who’s unwilling to take a bath

Director: Dezirae Flasch

A short film of an unexpected twist involving a sweet-toothed cat.

Director: Mo Cook & Artist Avenue

Director: Ally Ferris

An intimate look into the journey of non-binary artist and drag performer Mike Hooves as they navigate their new life and identity after being diagnosed with breast cancer.

Director: North Warhurst

We follow the story of Carmichael and Freddie. Two strangers who share the same path to work, end up soliciting notes to one another as if texting.

Director: Pau Escribano
Nomination: Best Art Dec

A comedy screenwriter for a TV show has to work with a new partner, Humormatic, a machine that writes jokes. The screenwriter will try to make her colleagues, her bosses, the TV host and the audience value her work, but Humormatic won’t make things easy.

Director: Álvaro G. Company
Nomination: Best Performance

Maruja, 80 years old, her husband has recently died. She spends his days without human contact, but, from time to time, she receives a call from a teleoperator…

Director: Susan Serrao

When Kayley finds out her celebrity obsession, Josh Maple, has tickets to the show playing at her theatre, that night, she follows the sacred skin care regime that he endorses as part of her “pulling out all the…” stops to ready herself for their first encounter. When Kayley finds out the truth about Josh Maple her world is rocked and she’s left with an embarassing reality.

Director: Benjamin Clavel
Nomination: Best Screenplay

In the hope of keeping her job as a freelancer journalist for a local TV station, Audrey finds herself presenting a lurid advertorial. But what was supposed to be a run-of-the-mill subject soon turns into a disaster.

Director: J Fitzpatrick

“Sex. Something that is part of human nature. Everyone does it and strives to have their happily ever after… Right?

In a society where intimacy and romance are constantly everywhere, someone breaks from the mould after years of self-discovery. They send a letter to their past self full of their experiences and lessons learned, in the form of a short documentary. A-Okay brings attention to the hyper-sexualized and romanticized society we live in and how it’s expectations, stigmas, and stereotypes can be harmful to individuals on the aromantic and asexual spectrums.”

Director: Lucia Kajánková
Nomination: Best Cinematography

A film about complexity of friendship of 3 teenage girls, 2 swimming pools and 1 malicious revenge.

Director: Julia Beney
Nomination: Best Overall Sound

“Tommy is new in town, and one fall evening, he finds himself home alone in a house that seems to whisper his name. That night, two teenage girls – Harlow and Darcy – break into Tommy’s house in search of the truth behind what happened to their friend Antonia… After claiming to hearing voices, a mysterious incident occurred that caused Antonia’s family to leave – and then Tommy moved in.
Armed with the lore of an alien who killed a lonely lady that now haunts the house, the trio begin their hunt but are quickly separated by an entity unlike anything they expected. Now alone, the ghostly creature haunts each of them, forcing the trio to confront their own fears: of being afraid, of not being “”special’ enough, and of being alone and misunderstood.
Soon the teens discover that this lonely ghost is not what it seems, and that the lore of the haunting was as misunderstood as the creature who still remains.
In order to solve the mystery and survive, Tommy, Harlow and Darcy need to mend frayed friendships, step out of their comfort zones, and embrace who they are so they can finally put the lonely monster to rest.”

Director: Daniel Christophersen
Nomination: Best Art Dec

Teenage superhero in the making Hannah Harper finds that despite her superpowers, she feels powerless to save our real world from its real-world problems.

Director: Dylan Scott Hryciuk
Nomination: Best Art Dec, Best Cinematography

A coming-of-age story set in the mid-2000s underground music scene, that follows quiet and naive punk, Casey, as he tries to piece together the broken memories recorded on his camcorder.

Director: Javier Badillo

Lupe doesn’t care about her abuela’s cooking lessons, she just wants to rock with her badass punk band. But when Lupe finds herself battling an alien monster with her band, her abuela’s lessons will remind her that punk rock is more than just loud music, and connecting with her Latin roots may just save their lives.

Director: Martin Seeger
Nomination: Best Editing

Jean, a Haitian migrant in Chili, is admired everywhere he goes. His body represents all the classical values of the academy. However, in the anonymity of his existence, he is also a canon of marginality.

Director: Oved Poran

A worker in a ship breaking yard is dealing with his father’s death. A work accident distort his sense of reality and combines the rusty ship body with his fathers׳ and the disease killing him. This state forces the worker to deal with repressed fears.

Director: Álvaro Hernández Blanco
Nomination: Best Editing, Best Documentary

After 15 years in Spain, Thimbo returns to his Senegalese fishing village, where he is overwhelmed by sensations of nostalgia and uprooting, yearning and resentment. He also grapples with the influence he exerts on the local youth, who see him as a role model and seek to emulate him through a perilous journey to Europe by boat.

Director: Nicolas Panay
Nomination: Best Overall Sound

Pierre is diligently overseeing the completion of the tumultuous construction site under his responsibility. An eco-district is due to arise from this bustling construction site. But for now, Pierre is ensuring that progress doesn’t come at the cost of safety.

Director: Keil Orion Troisi, Igor Vamos

Prankster activists perform an elaborate hoax to improve conditions for garment workers in the Adidas supply chain. Staging a shocking runway show at Berlin Fashion Week, they use humor and mischief to make the world pay attention to labor and environmental abuses that the massive sportswear brand is trying to hide.

Director: Jocelyn Chugg

““Mable Manor” follows two popular podcast hosts as they explore a crumbling farmhouse notorious for its dark history of violence. Accompanied by a timid special guest, they delve into the harrowing story of a family’s tragic past and the sinister force behind it.

As night falls, their curiosity leads them deeper into the house, but an unseen entity soon unleashes a relentless nightmare. Trapped and terrified, the trio must fight for survival in a gruesome battle against evil.

A chilling exploration of curiosity turned deadly, Mable Manor blurs the line between entertainment and unimaginable horror.”

Director: Teya Nicolaou

“A girl on a first date spots a bloated, decomposing muskrat along their romantic lakeside walk. She stops, takes out her trusty plastic gloves and bag, and brings it home with her on the train.

A contemporary artist uses foraged bones to create art pieces that comment on humanity’s critical disconnection from death.

An Indigenous man living in the city cleans bones and pins delicate insects in his small apartment, making terrariums that honor the beauty of animal parts.

A small business owner puts out internet ads looking for deceased farm animals.

A Toronto man starts an alternative pet memorial service, creating preserved body parts and articulated skeletons for grieving families.

Paradoxically, it is technology — the unprecedented potential of the internet for knowledge sharing and community building — that has empowered these amateurs and hobbyists to undertake a lifestyle that connects them to the most primal and disgusting parts of the natural world.

You will find them under the hashtag vulture culture — The internet’s term used to describe a diverse community of amateur taxidermists, bone scavengers, collectors of dead things, and quirky lovers of the macabre.

At boisterous oddity markets in the heart of downtown Toronto, tables are piled with jarred fetuses, skulls, taxidermy birds, vertebrae necklaces, and excited customers hand over bills in exchange for new additions to their collections.

Creating Afterlives goes beyond this shiny exterior, meeting vulture culture practitioners in their homes, art studios, and favorite roadkill hunting spots, and witnessing the strange afterlife that they create for these animals.

What do we have to learn from dead things and the people who love them? For some, vulture culture offers a deeper connection to nature. For others, it is a way of confronting death and processing grief. For others, the ultimate form of artistry.”

Director: Marie Heribel, Candice Yernaux, Juliette Buysschaert, Camille Leroy, Joséphine Vendeville, Martin Laurent, Lucas Foutrier

In a society where beauty is revered like a deity, a doll seeks to find her place.

Director: Alex Mitchell

A young woman engages the services of a tarot card reader and gets more than she bargained for…

Director: Andrew G. Cooper
Nomination: Best Special and Visual Effects

A young man on a mission to save a loved one becomes trapped in a basement with a mysterious stranger and must navigate how to survive as otherworldly creatures stalk the streets outside.

Director: Dante Costello

Director: Felix Bamborough
Nomination: Best Special and Visual Effects, Best Picture

“Jude grapples with loneliness after losing his wife, Ellie. One night, an intriguing advert for New Life Services catches his eye, promising to resurrect the dead. A desperate call allows Jude to meet the enigmatic Frank, who demands one of Ellie’s teeth for the resurrection procedure.

With the help of his teenage neighbor, Jude embarks on a quest to retrieve Ellie’s teeth, even resorting to asking her mother for her baby teeth. Jude ultimately confronts the grim reality when he exhumes Ellie’s body, realizing that some things are better left undisturbed.”

Director: Piret Sigus, Silja Saarepuu

Leo is a robot who lives in his cosy rusty house with a cat.

Director: Jade Dandan Evangelista

The newly married couple started their relationship right, however, a promise was broken and the marriage fell apart. A version of the Sun and the Moon folk tale from the Visayas of the Philippines.

Director: RICH FARRIS
Nomination: Best Animation

Things haven’t gone quite the way Robin expected them to, so she decides the time has come to get rid of her drum kit. But giving up her passion might not be as simple as she anticipates.

Director: Carlos Gómez-Mira Sagrado

Carmen’s a 7 year old girl raised by her italian Nonna. Her greatest gift to Carmen is a magic spoon which, thanks to a centuries-old spell, when savoring new dishes she can travel back to her memories and relive the anecdotes and adventures of her grandmother’s life and above all, learn vital lessons that will help her in her own life.

Director: Alexa Tremblay-Francoeur

On a windswept hill, in a place still young and devoid of all life, an ancestral house builds itself. The house comes to life and unveils its long life of one hundred and fifty years. Brick by brick and beam by beam, each action, big or small, shows life. Over the years, it leads us to feel the passage of time, the transformations of its surroundings and its vulnerability in the face of the unstoppable frenzy of our urban growth. The house evolves quietly in the heart of a growing and buzzing city that will eventually bring its end.

Director: xianting lin

A fire came suddenly, more devastating than the calamity itself, is the apathy surrounding us, the shell of the flesh has long arranged the way of your life in the dark. If the world’s “color” is not high and noble, if every soul deserves to be respected, born like mustard, the heart must be hidden in the heart, will be blossomed. In frustration and misunderstanding, a small heart is still beating as a flame.

Director: Carlos F. De Vigo, Lorena Ares
Nomination: Best Overall Sound, Best Screenplay

Alma, a solitary refugee child, is thrust back into her traumatic past when her doll falls into the swimming pool, mirroring the shipwreck of the refugee boat where she was the lone survivor. Luna, her savior, steps in to help her overcome her trauma and rebuild her life.

Director: Logan H Coutts

A retired NASA engineer has been living a quiet, happy life since his retirement. Now spending his time as an amateur radio operator, his routine radio bouncing is interrupted by an unexpected anomaly. He receives a signal that is unmistakably in English – a series of disjointed phrases and numbers. Intrigued and slightly unnerved, he tries to understand this bizarre transmission.

Director: Sara Valbuena

Helena is looking for love and tries dating apps. She’s going to be on a date with a normal guy for a normal night. But her ghosts from her past, injuries and “traumas” in the form of her exes, will hinder the normal development of the night.

Director: Arthur Lecocq, Gabriel Delcroix, Arthur Delcroix, Romuald Gouriou, Julien Vanas, Clarence Delehaye, Noëmie Ivelou
Nomination: Best Animation

During a theatrical performance featuring puppets glorifying war, a wounded soldier is taken backstage where he discovers the darker aspects of this spectacle.

Director: Lyna Tadount, Sofian Chouaib

While the Mom and the Dad try to put their baby to sleep, a competition arises between them: who will manage to get the baby to say the first word?

Director: HÅKON A OLAVSEN
Nomination: Best Performance, Best Picture

Vebjørn (29) has never had a girlfriend. He works as a mascot and ski instructor at a skiing resort. One day he crashes into the ski tourist, Polina, ruining her holiday. While he tries to make up for the accident, unexpected chemistry between the two arises. But Vebjørn’s anxiety around girls soon catches up with him, as he struggles to get over the idea that no one can like him in a romantic way.

Director: Chidera Kingsley Onuorah

A boy going through the a day of a life in university with the feeling of anxiety, loneliness and failure encompassing his every step.

Director: Samuel Adedoyin Kugbiyi

When two ambitious and competitive friends fall for the same girl at work, their loyalty to each other is tested – with a bit of madness and music.

Director: Sarah Uwadiae

A Somali-Canadian mother and daughter share their experiences as first and second-generation immigrants in Canada on their journey to belong

Director: Goga Clay
Nomination: Best Cinematography

Ibinabo, a young husband and father-to-be, lives an unremarkable but exemplary life. He strives to prove himself to his boss, but gets caught up in the horrors of the October 2020 protests against police brutality.

Director: Nicolas Monfort
Nomination: Best Special and Visual Effects, Best Picture

Winter 1986. Due to heavy snowfalls Mum and Dad won’t be back to the chalet until morning. Simon and Eva, the children, are on their own. At night, they hear strange noises…

Director: Victor Monigote
Nomination: Best Animation

There is a Sunset in the forest. After a frantic chase, a fierce-looking hominid confronts an old man and his hyena-dog, with an unexpected result.

Director: Ariana Andrade Castro

A lonely and curious 9-year-old girl discovers that her father, a truck driver who travels the country transporting fruit, is carrying more than just goods.

Director: Peter Pasyk
Nomination: Best Performance

An understudy actor receives a call that he must go on last-minute to replace the star of a major stage production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, all while caring for his young granddaughter.

Director: Dallas Soonias

“Bart and his group of outlaws are looking for one last score before leaving the territory. They have decided to hide just outside of town in a beautiful home while Bart sends one of his boys into town to grab the bank manager. Bart is enjoying a cigar and a drink in the home of the bank manager when Charlie comes back with the bank teller. Not the first time Charlie has messed up. All the other boys are upset with Charlie, again for messing up. Charlie decides to get him to talk by beating him up, hoping he will give up the information about the town’s bank that they are all looking for. As Bart is informed that Charlie is back by his right hand, Leroy, Bart stares at a picture of a past love he should never have left.
As Bart leaves the home, he stops and yells at Charlie. He proceeds to apologize to the teller for the way he was treated but insists there was meaning behind it. They need to know where the key is to the safe in town so they can leave town with one last big score. They have the law just two days behind them and they are in a hurry. As the bank teller Tom, is questioned by Bart and asked if he is married and has children, Tom decides he isn’t dying for anyone. He gives up the key to the safe. It’s around his next and Bart and his boys think they have scored?
Bart sends Charlie back into the house to check on the bank manager to see if he is still alive. As Charlie starts for the house, Tom informs Bart of a new safe that was just delivered and it needs a key and a combination to open it.
Bart stops and yells at Charlie to keep the bank manager alive but as Charlie reaches the door, he hears Bart yell at him but as he opens the door, Charlie hears a familiar click of a shotgun. Charlie turns for cover against the building and two shotgun blasts just miss him. Charlie rushes in with his gun drawn and fires at the bank manager, killing on the floor of the house.
Charlie proudly comes out, trying to get back on Bart’s good side. Bart yells at him that they needed the bank manager alive. Charlie pleads his case about being shot at.
Bart has had enough. With an all to familiar look at Leroy, as Charlie turns to walk away, Leroy guns him down as he walk. Charlie falls dead to the ground.
Leroy reminds Bart about Tom, still sitting there, tied up, sitting on a fallen tree. Bart decides he has seen too much and is no longer valuable and shoots him dead as well.
Bart and his boys mount up and head into the town to see if the key fits and they can track down that combination somewhere for one last big score.”

Director: TOMA WASZAROW
Nomination: Best Screenplay

On the evening of the premiere of his new film, director is curious to see what the audience and critics think when an unexpected guest suddenly appears.

Director: Gillian McKercher

Director: Minerva Marie Navasca

A young Filipina filmmaker attempts to overwrite a painful memory of her mother with a perfect narrative.

Director: Louis Moulin
Nomination: Best Documentary

Bloodhound dog handlers have an essential role in Québec’s hunting ecosystem. This short film meets one of them, Yves Martineau, and follows his long waits and intense research through the vastness of Canadian forest.

Director: Mohammad Reza Nazi

A female dog escaped from her owner to save her puppies, but her owner decided to kill her puppies…

Director: Adrián Ordóñez

Manuel Galindo, a man linked to sand, fire, sea and air, as the last sardine roaster. Raised on the beaches, Manuel was not initially destined to be a sardine roaster, but a family tragedy forced him to devote himself to this profession. Through the embers and the flavors he creates, he reveals stories of memory, identity and deep human connections on our coast.

Director: Jose Montero

When Ander goes to take his dog Beicon for a walk, he runs into Carlos, his ex-partner, who has been waiting for him on the landing of the flat where they lived together before their traumatic breakup. Under the pretext of collecting his remaining belongings, Carlos takes the opportunity to address a pending issue: Beicon’s custody.

Director: Morgan Ermter

A student named Crow, with an innate fascination for crows, has to choose between her love of the birds and potential ridicule from peers.

Director: Anna Anat Gofman Banai
Nomination: Best Documentary

The wish of her son to raise bees forces the director to deal with her own fragile memories from her childhood.

Director: Samuel Plante

“Based on true events:

What started out as a fun, romantic game in Andrea’s relationship turns into a bizarre scavenger hunt for hidden truths when she discovers her boyfriend’s strange attachment to her 14-year-old sister.”

Director: Maryam Khodabakhsh

Negar is a young girl who loses something that causes trouble for her right on the day of her proposal ceremony.