Baby (EN)

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This morning, Marina has an appointment with Charlie to sell her a mattress. This evening, she will cancel her plane for Reunion. But they don't know that yet.

Featurein cinema

SPANISH • FRENCH ST | Argentinian filmmaker Matías is an intense perfectionist struggling to shape his autobiographical film as the past wriggles from his grip. Is Alexander—a dashing fabulist from Sweden he met in Italy as a boy—the lost love of his life? Or just a lovely, bittersweet dream? At the United World College of the Adriatic, with its diverse, exuberant student body, young Matías (Santiago Madrussan) finds a freedom he never knew in Argentina. There, he is befriended by Alexander (Oscar Morgan), whose rousing stories and bedroom eyes make the world more magical, and whose family’s vast holiday home becomes a memory palace for all that was left unsaid. In his 40s, Matías (co-writer/director Juan Pablo Di Pace) looks back at this time and, with a festival deadline looming, tries to fathom the sizzling closeness and coded interactions. A key piece of evidence lying dormant for when he least expects it. With its meta intrigues and captivating sweep, Duino is an elegiac masterwork crackling with swoon-worthy chemistry. A film that asks: how far are we willing to go for a proper conclusion, and what, in the end, remains voices in the wind?

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Inspired by true events, in 1970 an unorthodox mother sends her offbeat son from New Brunswick on a wintry cross-country mission past Quebec to retrieve his brother from Toronto after a public sex violation. Antics ensue in the Two-Solitudes atmosphere, bursting with revealing humour about brotherly love and French-English relations. In bravura performances, Alan Cumming plays motormouth Perley—dressed in an ushanka and ascot, taxidermied dog tucked under his arm—and Charlie Creed-Miles is Weldon—a gruff stoic in crooked glasses. These oddball siblings travel through frozen nights and across the language divide as they bicker, break down, and ultimately bond in their journey through central and eastern Canada. Weldon forced to confront the reality of Perley’s homosexuality (and his abject fear of being required to speak French) as he processes a horrific event from their past. After a lifetime of shutting down, a new set of dire circumstances has them opening their ears to hear one another’s stories. Award-winning filmmaker Michael Clowater, a master of wringing humour from pain, never loses sight of Perley and Weldon’s essential humanity among the pratfalls and bigotries, embedding beautiful truths in the film’s engrossing frictions.

Featurein cinema

PORTUGUESE • FRENCH ST | Wellington (defiantly nicknamed Baby) trades his detention centre cell for the streets of São Paulo, absorbed into the life of an in-demand “escort” with old school methods. Torn between this erotic father figure, two chosen families, and the mother who left him, Wellington must discern which link is the strongest. Against a backdrop of corrupt cops, vengeful kingpins, and Brazilian ball culture, maybe-18-year-old Wellington (João Pedro Mariano) falls for 42-year-old sex worker cum drug dealer Ronaldo (Ricardo Teodoro), who has a son not much younger than Wellington being raised by lesbian mothers. The two share a charged, teasing bond with yo-yoing power dynamics. Wellington softens Ronaldo, schooling him in voguing’s ebullience and showing him his battle scars, while Ronaldo grounds his protege, giving him boxing lessons while doling out paternal advice and setting strict boundaries. Boundaries that Ronaldo is desperate to maintain and Wellington comes to resent when youthful potential and a biological parent draw him away. Propelled by Marcelo Caetano’s stylish direction, this gritty coming-of-age tale wrestles with themes of love and coercion, considering what’s still possible for a restless heart when a ‘baby’ becomes a man.

Documentaryin cinemavirtual exclusive

Struck by “archive fever,” a gay transmasculine Iranian-American searches for the roots of his desire. Navigating with us through this steamy hybrid documentary, he comes into contact with trailblazing transcestor Lou Sullivan, the contemporary lived experiences of other queer men, and the eroticism of his own unique body. With the assistance of young non-binary archivist Kieran (Theo Germain), older transman Ahmad (Aden Hakimi) delves into Chicago’s LGBTQ+ archives and the past and present bathhouses of Boystown to explore his homosexual longing. He learns—as we do through the real-life interviews and the history of raids and radical action that nest within this fictional storyline—that there is no one answer. There are as many points of view as there are interviewees. Archival footage of Lou Sullivan, who openly identified as trans and gay as far back as the 1970s, shows that though these conversations are not new, they are still very much necessary, connecting transmasculine gay men with themselves and the larger community. Jules Rosskam’s narratively frisky and hugely affecting film is a celebration of complexity, working to dissolve rigid labels and authoritative permission when it comes to narrating one’s own sexuality.

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Five thousand twenty five walks. Fifty-two miles of floors mopped. Seventy hours watching movie stars kiss. Alice, a headstrong elder dyke, navigates environmentally induced illness while she contends with her unique notion of legacy.

Documentaryvirtual exclusive

The work of Two-Spirit, nêhiyaw (Cree) artist George Littlechild took the reality of residential schools head-on decades before it would enter the collective Canadian conscience. A Sixties Scoop survivor, Littlechild uses his “whimsical,” improvised technique to unlock colourful exuberance and long-held trauma. Conor McNally, a Métis filmmaker, honours his journey. Littlechild was given his great grandfather’s name, nanekawâsis, at a Powwow in 2001. Both Littlechild and the eponymously named film embody its meaning: “swift child.” As we pay witness to a childhood shuffled between foster homes and Littlechild’s emergence as a fleet-fingered artist, the documentary makes fluid connections between past and present. Archival footage blends with warmly tinted 16mm interviews of 65-year-old Littlechild, still evolving in his practice, still passing on his deeply felt knowledge of his ancestry and “Rainbow” spirit. Whereas his partner, John Powell, uses art to govern his freewheeling tendencies, Littlechild harnesses paint to break free of his circumscribed daily life, healing himself and his audience through enlightened transcendence. nanekawâsis begins and ends with a sky full of colour, beautifully eliding time, revealing how light and dark, expectancy and reflection are all indispensable parts of life’s circle.

Documentaryin cinema

In Sandi DuBowski’s crucial, decades-spanning documentary (executive produced by Darren Aronofsky), Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie takes on the Orthodox regime amid escalating reactions to his experimental spirit. It will take harrowing face-to-face confrontations, heated ideological conversations, and all the Radical Faerie magic he can muster to weather the onslaught. Part of a line of rabbis stretching back to the 11th century, at age 28 Amichai left his isolated, pressurized upbringing in Israel for the freedoms of late-90s New York. In America, he joined the Radical Faeries and tapped into the feminine divine with his Rebbetzin Hadassah Gross drag persona, finding redemption through transgression, and founding the God-optional congregation Lab/Shul. Still, he encounters a wall of tradition and the pull of his familial dynasty. Enrolling to become a rabbi at the Conservative-leaning Jewish Theological Seminary, he endeavours to change the system from the inside, but soon finds himself at odds with his peers and “co-conspirators,” defending laws he once broke. Will he have the stamina and willpower to remain true to his ideals, or will his lofty goals end up quelling his radical energy and all that he means to others?

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This homage to Bollywood spectacle and intergenerational bonds is a time-hopping, candy-coloured crowd pleaser that induces huge smiles and big laughs while also tackling the resonant themes of enforced gender roles, passive racism, and the seismic shifts of growing up. Azra (a stunning Amrit Kaur) lives in cohabitating sexual bliss with her girlfriend in Toronto in the VHS-popping 90s when she receives news of her father’s death. One voltaic match cut later and she’s on a plane for the funeral in Pakistan with her brother (Ali A. Kazmi), where her mother (Ms. Marvel’s Nimra Bucha) nitpicks and her culture shuts her out of the mourning process. Then another and we’re in 1969 Karachi, swept up in the whirlwind romance of Azra’s rule-breaking mother (also played by Amrit Kaur, underscoring mother-daughter parallels) and dashing father (Hamza Haq) before their tough transition to 1989 Nova Scotia. Each temporal hop peeling back another layer of how Azra’s family dynamic came to be. The Queen of My Dreams is itself a moviegoer’s dream, chock-full of eye-popping visuals, high production value, and fantastic fashion. Revealing how salvation can come in unlikely ways from unlikely sources.

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EXT. DAY - A sunny Sunday morning on a café terrace: Isabelle, an actor whose career is in a rut, meets Johanne, her agent, who might have a new part for her. Tension mounts both at the table and in the surroundings. Will expectations be met?