CANADA | 70 min | Partial Subtitles
Co-presented by RahrBSG
Tickets: $12/PWYW
A collection of artful short docs on being, longing, and belonging.
Post-Film: Talkback with Cathy van Ingen (director), Erin Brandson, and Ren Navarro from What Ales Us?
Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying
Natalie Baird & Toby Gillies | CANADA | 7 min
A meditation on love, grief, and imagination. This poetic short celebrates life and the transformative ability of art to elevate and transcend us. Through vivid drawings and Edith’s simple yet magical words, the film explores our enduring bond with loved ones who have passed. In honouring her son’s life within the cosmos, Edith’s artworks embody colours, shapes and metaphors that remind us of the timeless power of love, gravity, and grace until our final breaths.
DIRECTOR BIO:
Natalie Baird & Toby Gillies are a visual art duo from Winnipeg, Canada. For 10 years they have shared an artistic practice rooted in experiments and exploration in drawing, photography, filmmaking and community collaboration. Their projects strive to build reciprocal relationships through shared art experiences in their neighbourhood and beyond—be it locked healthcare units, city parks, or on the sea ice in the Canadian High Arctic.
Unnamed
Iranmehr Salimi | IRAN | 13 min
Zainab supports her family financially through a career in women’s volleyball, but knows that they are trans and wants to transition. With limited gender rights in Iran, the decision has many personal, social, financial, and cultural implications that they must wade through to claim their identity. If they transition, will they be accepted as a man and be able to continue to compete in the sport that they love professionally?
DIRECTOR BIO:
Iranmehr Salimi holds an MA in animation directing from Tarbiat Modares University and BA in television and digital arts from Iran Broadcasting University. She is the winner of Iran's university student painting competition (2012), and has been working in animation, motion comics, and television projects as a freelance artist. Unnamed is her first film as writer and director.
Big Moves
Sarah Grant | UK | 14 min
A lifetime of being told that she, as a fat person, can’t dance—and believing it—leads Glaswegian filmmaker Sarah Grant to expose the big fat lies that exclude bigger bodies from the dance floor. Through re-enacting iconic dance sequences from Friends, Pulp Fiction, Dirty Dancing, and Britney Spears, Grant challenges the cultural obsession with perfection and the deception that goes with it. Every body can dance, and deserves to.
DIRECTOR BIO:
Sarah Grant is a writer, director and performer based in Glasgow. She has a number of BAFTA qualifying shorts under her belt, and has created short-form work for BBC The Social and BBC Short Stuff. Sarah is the author of Fat Girl Best Friend, a creative non-fiction book about representation of plus size women in film and tv, published by Tippermuir books. She is also a practicing spoken word artist and award winning theatre maker.
I’ll Tell You When I’m Ready
Hayley Morin | CANADA | 14 min
jaye simpson, an Oji-Cree-Saulteaux indigiqueer writer, poet, activist and drag queen, navigates the complexities of their multifaceted artistic expressions while grappling with the loss of their mother and reflecting on their experiences in the Canadian child services system.
DIRECTOR BIO:
Hayley Morin is an award-winning nehiyaw filmmaker from Treaty 6. Born and raised on the Enoch Cree Nation, Hayley has combined her passion for filmmaking and the love of her culture to share stories from underrepresented communities through an Indigenous lens. She began her career in film with her debut short, The Crying Fields, and has gone on to produce a string of impactful short documentaries such as Precious Leader Woman for ESPN and TELUS Originals, and Joe Buffalo for The New Yorker. She was awarded the 2024 Emerging Canadian Artist award at the Inside Out festival in Toronto for I'll Tell You When I'm Ready
What Ales Us?
Cathy van Ingen | CANADA | 22 min
A #MeToo-style reckoning unfolds in the craft beer industry in Canada when Erin Brandson and Ren Navarro begin sharing experiences of sexual harassment, assault, homophobia, and racism, leading a movement for change. No longer will they allow brewing to be a dangerous bros’ club, especially when beer making was once dominated by women.
DIRECTOR BIO:
Cathy van Ingen is an independent documentary filmmaker based in Niagara on the Lake. While working as a professor of Kinesiology at Brock University, Cathy undertook an MFA degree at Toronto Metropolitan University in Documentary Media. What Ales Us? is her first film. With an interest in documentaries about unsung heroes and untold injustices, she launched a production company, Catchweight Films. She is interested in crafting character-driven visual stories drawing on original research and compelling narratives.
