Theme: Ancestral Imaginings
We are nothing without those who came before us and in their histories we may find allegories that fuel our search for redemption and cultural understanding. These eight films all examine aspects of ancestral lineage and how that ties into our present realities. Sometimes, we look backwards so we can imagine a better future.
Films Playing
Boutique
Brishkay Ahmed
Canada | 2025 | 21min
On the night of the Taliban’s arrival in Kabul, a young woman must work through her fears and find hope in tomorrow
Good Girl
Sunita Miya Muganza
Canada | 2024 | 13min
Halima, a single mother living in a close-knit, East African community in Calgary, is thrust into a precarious situation when she makes a last-minute decision to stop her 13-year-old daughter Salama’s trip back to Kenya to be circumcised
On A Sunday At Eleven
Alicia Harris
Canada | 2024 | 9min
A young Black girl navigates exclusion in her all-white ballet class, reclaiming her beauty, identity, and power in an ethereal and unapologetic celebration of Blackness.
Mawtini (My Homeland)
Fateema Al-Hamaydeh Miller
Canada | 2023 | 19min
It’s a story about two women, Nawal (Palestinian) and Tanya (Indigenous), who start a guerrilla garden on their apartment building’s lawn and face resistance from management.
Rosa’s Flowers
Amanda Ann-Min Wong
Canada | 2024 |18m
In 1998 Jakarta, two girls promise to stay friends forever. “Rosa’s Flowers” is a surrealistic, narrative short film exploring the unbreakable bonds of friendship beyond memory, borders, and time.
Good Boy / 乖仔
Yvette Sin, Nikita Zhang
Canada | 2023 | 17min
When a troubled Chinese-Canadian boy gets suspended from school, he spends a week collecting cans with his oddball immigrant grandmother, a fellow outcast who teaches him that, sometimes, it’s okay to cry.
Inkwo for When the Starving Return
Amanda Strong
Canada | 2024 | 18min
Dove, a gender-shifting warrior, uses their Indigenous medicine (Inkwo) to protect their community from an unburied swarm of terrifying creatures.