Films
Friday, February 16
I Like Movies
Canada, 2022 | 99 min, Comedy/Drama
Directed by Chandler Levack
Rated 14A
Burlington, Ontario, 2003. Hyper-ambitious teenage cinephile Lawrence Kweller (Isaiah Lehtinen) dreams of attending film school at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. In order to raise the hefty tuition fee, he gets his dream job at the local video store, Sequels. Wracked with anxiety about his future, Lawrence begins alienating the most important people in his life – his best friend Matt Macarchuck (Percy Hynes White), his single mother Terri (Krista Bridges) – all while developing a complicated friendship with his older female manager, Alana (Romina D’Ugo). As graduation looms ever closer, a series of painful realizations force Lawrence to realize that he is a pretentious asshole. I Like Movies premiered at Toronto International Film Festival. Among its many accolades, the film was selected for Canada's Top 10 (TIFF) and named Best Canadian Picture by the Vancouver Film Critics Circle. Trailer
The Quiet Girl
Ireland, 2022 | 95 min, Partially Subtitled, Drama
Directed by Colm Bairéad
Rated PG
Based on the acclaimed story, Foster by Claire Keegan, the Irish-language feature film The Quiet Girl (An Cailín Ciúin) is a complex and delicate coming-of-age drama that explores questions of family, neglect and loss through the eyes of its young protagonist. The shy and soft-spoken girl Cáit is sent by her mother and father to live with a pair of distant relatives. Out in the countryside, Cáit spends the summer with them on an idyllic Irish farm, and along the way, she comes to terms with an unexpected reality. Through a simple, hushed narrative, the film accomplishes the feat of changing its protagonist’s life in 90 short minutes. The Quiet Girl had its world premiere at the prestigious Berlinale where it won The Grand Prix of the Generation KPlus International Jury for Best Film. It was a 2023 Academy Awards nominee for Best International Feature Film. Trailer
Saturday, February 17
To Kill a Tiger
India/Canada, 2022 | 125 min, Subtitled, Documentary
Directed by Nisha Pahuja
Rated PG
In a small Indian village, Ranjit wakes up to find that his 13-year old daughter has not returned from a family wedding. A few hours later, she is found alive, after being sexually assaulted by three men. Ranjit goes to the police and the men are arrested, but the villagers and leaders launch a sustained campaign to force the family to drop the charges. In India, where sexual assaults are reported every 20 minutes and conviction rates are less than 30 percent, a father’s decision to support his daughter is virtually unheard of. To Kill a Tiger follows the family’s uphill battle in a fight for justice. This cinematic documentary has tremendous access as we witness an emotional journey of a father whose love for his daughter forces a social reckoning. To Kill a Tiger won the 2023 Canadian Screen Award for Best Feature Length Documentary and is nominated for an 2024 Academy Award. Trailer
Short Films
Heartbeat of a Nation
2022 | 20 min
Directed by Eric Janvier
On a beautiful sunny day in Northern Alberta, a river surrounded by green trees runs gently through the traditional lands of the Chipewyan Prairie Dene First Nation. As birds softly chirp, a father makes a tobacco offering to the river and reaches his hands below the water’s surface to pull out a caribou hide. Nearby, his young child watches. Today they will learn from their father how to make a caribou drum. Heartbeat of a Nation is an evocative short documentary by Eric Janvier. It celebrates the healing of a community and a nation through the reclamation and passing down of traditional teachings within a Dene family.
The Girl With the Red Beret
2023 | 6 min
Directed by Janet Perlman
A girl takes a wild ride on the metro in Montreal. Travelling from station to station, she encounters an array of colourful characters in a bizarre musical journey that’s peppered with hilarious and unexpected incidents. This joyful, heartwarming animated film portrays Montreal in all its vitality, creativity and diversity, with plenty of humour and good cheer, to the tune of Kate and Anna McGarrigle’s timeless hit “Complainte pour Ste-Catherine.”
Swallow, Dear Swallow
2023 | 9 min
Directed by Eva Colmers
Wistful accordion music and stunning shadow imagery swirl together in this visually and acoustically lush short film about two dreamers that unite in a quest to help others. Based on Oscar Wilde’s short story The Happy Prince, the images in Swallow, Dear Swallow are all handmade and are a love letter to creative analog cinematography. With a simple, transforming set, elements of live puppetry and minimal edits, the viewer is transported to different places following the brave little swallow - evoking the magic of a live performance.
Nalujuk Night
2021 | 13 min
Directed by Jennie Williams
Nalujuk Night is an up-close look at an exhilarating, and sometimes terrifying, Labrador Inuit tradition. Every January 6th from the dark of the Nunatsiavut night, the Nalujuit appear on the sea ice. They walk on two legs, yet their faces are animalistic, skeletal, and otherworldly. Snow crunches underfoot as they approach their destination: the Inuit community of Nain. Despite the frights, Nalujuk Night is a beloved annual event, showing that sometimes it can be fun to be scared. Rarely witnessed outside of Nunatsiavut, this annual event is an exciting chance for Inuit, young and old, to prove their courage and come together as a community to celebrate culture and tradition.
A Second Act
14 min
Featuring Adriano Sobretodo Jr.
Adriano is a classically trained screen and stage actor based in Toronto. “But it didn’t start out that way. Acting wasn’t on the radar coming out of high school. Smart kids did sciences.” But after a Queen’s University Life Sciences degree and foray into the corporate world for ten years, the acting bug re-emerged after volunteering as a theatre usher. With the business and acting world on a collision course, he decided to quit his job and eventually completed an Acting MFA at York University. In this sampling of clips, you’ll get a glimpse of Adriano’s eclectic theatre and screen performances over his decade plus professional career – as an actor. adrianosobretodojr.com
Past Lives
USA/South Korea, 2023 | 105 min, Partially Subtitled, Romance/Drama
Directed by Celine Song
Rated PG
Nora and Hae Sung, two deeply connected childhood friends, are separated from each other when Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea. Two decades later, Hae Sung resolves to visit Nora for a few days in New York where she lives with her American husband, Arthur. Facing each other like the phantoms of a life unlived, they confront notions of destiny, love and the choices that constitute a life. Does love shape our lives? What kinds of sacrifices are necessary to become the people we are? Past Lives is an achingly effective love story and a rare emotionally mature film somewhere between the romantic and the platonic. It was nominated for the 2023 Berlinale Golden Bear Award for Best Film and won Best Director at the 2023 Asia Pacific Screen Awards. Trailer
Brian and Charles
UK, 2022 | 91 min, Comedy/Drama
Directed by Jim Archer
Rated PG
An endearing, eccentric loner, Brian lives alone in a Welsh valley, inventing peculiar contraptions that seldom work. After finding a discarded mannequin head, Brian gets an idea. Three days, a washing machine, and sundry spare parts later, he’s invented Charles, an artificially intelligent robot who learns English from a dictionary and proves a charming, cheeky companion. Before long, however, Charles develops autonomy. Intrigued by the wider world, Charles craves adventure which leads to challenges which push his inventor to face-up to his oddness, a local bully and talking to a woman he is fond of. Brian and Charles is a quirky and heartfelt tale of friendship, loneliness, family, finding love and letting go. This feature length film is an adaptation of the 2017 short film of the same name, which premiered at the 2022 US Sundance Film festival and won the Audience Award at 2022 Sundance: London. Trailer
Sunday, February 18
Cluny Brown
USA, 1946 | 100 min, Comedy/Romance
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch
Special Introduction by Trond Trondsen
Cluny Brown is a zany, zippy satire on the smugness of British high society. This 1946 film looks back to the prewar year of 1938 to take stock of the postwar world and to show how it became that way. Cluny Brown shines as an irrepressible heroine with a zeal for plumbing. As she questions and attempts to find her place as a woman in British society, she meets a kindred outsider in a Czech émigré writer and anti-Fascist. Between her eccentric, singular plumbing interest and his wildly liberal ironies, they thoroughly shake up the staid English country manor owners, staff and village. The film acts as a diorama of established roles, jobs, and relations that characters inhabit with grace even as their rigid adherence to their functions is turned into comedy. Trailer
The Blue Caftan
Morocco/France/Belgium, 2022 | 122 min, Subtitled, Drama
Directed by Maryam Touzani
Rated 14A
Halim has been married for a long time to Mina, with whom he runs a traditional caftan store in the médina of Salé, in Morocco. Halim is a maalem, a master tailor of the old school. He doesn’t use a sewing machine, works at his own pace and has a craftsman’s appreciation of fabrics, threads and beautiful embroidery. He and his wife love each other deeply. But there is one subject both of them deal with on their own: Halim’s homosexuality. When Youssef starts to work as an apprentice, it is clear the two men are attracted to each other. At the same time, Mina’s lingering illness worsens. It makes all three of them carefully explore what lives in their hearts. The Blue Caftan was nominated for the 2022 Cannes Un Certain Regard and Queer Palm Award. It won the 2022 Vancouver International Film Festival Audience Award. Trailer
Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom
Bhutan, 2019 | 110 min, Subtitled, Drama
Directed by Pawo Choyning Dorji
Rated PG
Ugyen is a twenty-something posted to the village of Lunana, Bhutan to teach in the world’s most isolated school. The far-flung outpost, some 12,000ft above sea-level in the Himalayas, involves a taxing seven-day hike from his bustling city. When the power in his mobile devices dwindle, so do his spirits, as he feels even further away from his dream of seeking fame and fortune as a musician in Australia. Ugyen’s despondency at the rustic living and working conditions is gradually dispelled into delight when he encounters eager pupils and is entranced by the village’s most accomplished singer. Experiencing the respect and hospitality of the villagers along with a nationally-revered yak in his classroom, Ugyen discovers new meanings about community and connection. After winning audience awards at festivals worldwide, Lunana: A Yak In The Classroom lined up as Bhutan’s official entry on the coveted 2022 Oscar shortlist for Best International Feature. Trailer