Bath Bomb

CompetitionShort

Albert and Sixten are getting married. Today. The only problem is that if they were completely honest with each other, they shouldn’t even be a couple anymore.

Short

A short music film set to classical music from Québec and filmed in a colourful, cinematic style, Doux temps (Sweet Times) explores the sharp contrast between, on the one hand, the somewhat routine daily lives of four characters and, on the other, the lyrical sweep of words and music that evoke the amorous passions of the ‘sweet days’ of youth.

Made au CanadaShort

A man comes home to his lover on their anniversary expecting a romantic night of celebration only to find someone tied up in the bathroom.

Short

Fanny is a bookseller by day and a soft-hearted person the rest of the time. In love with her friend Louise and to repress the sadness of this impossible love, she has a series of one-night stands with uninteresting men. One evening, she invites Louise to a literary gathering she's hosting. Fanny may be about to have a bingo.

Short

Created and directed by Jasia Ka, BUSHWITCHES is a supernatural dark comedy about a coven of witches living in Bushwick, Brooklyn. The Bushwitches embark on a series of magical misadventures in their mission to regain dominance in the tarot card industry and oh yeah, take down the patriarchy. If God’s out and astrology is in, then all hail the Bushwitches: our 21st century disciples.

Made au CanadaShort

When her self-help podcast asks her what she wishes to manifest, our hero realizes her desires are outgrowing her current relationship.

Made au CanadaCompetitionShort

Between loads of laundry at the corner laundromat, Cooper shares the tumultuous story of her gender reassignment journey.

Made au CanadaCompetitionFeature

In the vein of the Tony award-winning musical Stereophonic, this must-see drama is a Behind the Music-style glimpse of a 2000s Toronto indie band with Fleetwood Mac-like flare ups. With a trans frontman and queer members, The New Normals break boundaries while breaking one another’s hearts. Building off the source material, the novel Heidegger Stairwell by Kayt Burgess, Karen Knox maintains balletic control of multiple perspectives and aesthetics, following how each of the five core members handles firsts: first music video, first phone sex job, first love triangle. Music saves this close-knit crew from quarrels when it’s not causing them, but it’s the in-fighting, the “threads of connection and tension” that keep their audience hungering for more. Will the trans frontman (Lane Webber) stay with his queer girlfriend and songwriting partner (June Laporte) or find a different tune with Lugh (Daniel Gravelle)? Will the band survive or live on only in tribute? These concerns converge in a film charged with envy, creative friendship, and reckless love, and chock-full of pedigreed talent, including co-writing credits from award-winning Canadian writer, Zoe Whittall and festival alumni, Pat Mills as well as original songs from Stars’ Torquil Campbell.

Made au CanadaShort

A journey into Aly’s world and his personal growth through the eyes of his new furry, Eden. Aly opens up about his next character, Lusia, who will resemble him in every way.

Made au CanadaCompetitionFeatureVIRTUAL EXCLUSIVE

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.

Made au CanadaShort

Gilbert Mhanna is a queer Lebanese artist based in Toronto. His art is baladi, a dance traditionally reserved for cis women. Together, we'll explore the relationship of his Araboqueer body to this Canadian space. How does this country continue to flow through their veins?

Made au CanadaDocumentary

LGBTQ+ activist Staceyann Chin easily identifies as a mother, poet, writer, dissenter, and truth speaker—it is the label of “daughter” that causes her the most pause. Forced to become a sleuth, she attempts to pierce the veil of secrecy around her mother’s life and come to terms with her absence. After decades pursuing “the career of lesbianism,” Chin is now hot on the trail of her mother Hazel and a more anchored sense of self. Chin travels from Brooklyn to Montreal, where Hazel lived after abandoning Chin in search of a better life, then onwards to far-flung destinations: Germany, Jamaica. Chin talks to neighbours and loved ones, piecing together the puzzle as she goes. With every clue, she is forced to confront past traumas and test the limits of forgiveness, all while caring for her daughter, with whom she famously stages “Living Room Protests” on YouTube. Tapping into the ferocity of Chin’s slam poetry and using digital collage to convey Hazel’s floral allure, director Laurie Tonwshend paints a dual portrait of motherhood. She also practices Chin’s hard-won brand of radical kindness and compassion, finding the grace in failure.

Made au CanadaDocumentaryVIRTUAL EXCLUSIVE

The rediscovery of a neon sign transports us back to when disco was queen and Edmonton’s Flashback club became “the Studio 54 of the Prairies.” Through years of violent raids and the encroachment of AIDS like wildfire, the club and its members nourished an open-hearted, fashion-forward oasis. Created and narrated by Montreal teacher and writer Matthew Hays, Flashback is an insider’s take on how a nightlife “melting pot” defied expectations of “the most Bible Belt-y place in Canada” and rose to international fame. Told he wasn’t gay enough to enter Club 70, Albertan John Reid endeavoured to create his own welcoming space: equal parts state-of-the-art discotheque, record store, and community hub. There, queer youth blossomed and Gretzky and Sarah McLachlan partied. Twirl to the soaring vocals of D’orjay and hip bump with those who were there through clouds of perfume and poppers, while getting a fascinating primer on how the club’s designers calibrated disco music for a custom-built dancefloor. Even when Flashback eventually lost its blissed-out exuberance during the AIDS epidemic, it gave much in return: a relief in a maelstrom and a social conscience for the fights to come.

Made au CanadaShort

Cole, a resilient transgender man, navigates his coming out journey within the confines of an all-girls school, while his mother confronts her own emotional struggles. Together, they learn to push societal norms and embrace the power of acceptance.

Made au CanadaShort

After the 100th 'The Thursday Testo,' (TTT), the tri-languistical references such as the Roman and Korean (Hangeul) alphabets and the Japanese syllabic (Katana) alphabet of the word TRANS on a comedy sketch by Kě.