Synopsis

Inspired by a folktale about a young boy who is turned into a stork by his father, the new film from the Oscar-nominated director of Honeyland tells a heartwarming story of family, farming and sustainability in North Macedonia. Set in a region with one of the densest stork populations, the film parallels the children’s fable with the real-life story of charming elderly farmers Nicola and Jana. Facing mounting economic pressures that force his family into working in exile, Nicola stays behind, unsure whether they should sell the farm altogether. When the veteran farmer rescues an injured stork from a nearby landfill, he finds new meaning and hope in the nurturing of his feathered friend.

So skillfully crafted that it feels as much like a cinematic parable as a documentary, The Tale of Silyan features captivating storytelling and visually stunning cinematography, exquisitely capturing both the rural landscape as well as the majestic storks. Both personal and poetic, the film relates a cautionary tale of ecological imbalance. Perhaps the storks have something to tell us all.

Synopsis

This captivating documentary directed by visionary filmmaker Michèle Stephenson (co-director of Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project), is a provocative confrontation of Canada’s historical and ongoing anti-Black racism. Through a masterful blend of insightful interviews and evocative archival footage, the film traces the height of the nation’s civil rights movement of the ‘60s in the unlikely hotbed of Montreal, revealing how the nation’s myth of tolerance masks a legacy of slavery, systemic exclusion, and generational trauma.

Haunting soundscapes, layered visuals, and non-linear storytelling combine to create a visceral atmosphere that echoes the emotional weight of displacement and erasure. The film not only excavates buried truths about Canada’s complicity in the transatlantic slave trade and xenophobic immigration policies but also challenges viewers to question national narratives that sanitize oppression. With both personal tenderness and historical rigor, True North shatters illusions of Canadian innocence, demanding accountability and reckoning with the untold stories of resistance, survival, and Black resilience on northern soil.

Synopsis

João, a young actress, is cast in a biopic to play the gender-nonconforming Liberada, who was persecuted by the Inquisition in 18th-century Portugal. At first thrilled to embody such a resilient, rebellious figure from history, she begins to clash with the film’s director over his inclination to portray Liberada’s suffering and the violence inflicted upon them. As Liberada’s ghost begins to haunt João, the director slips into a mysterious coma; João finds herself at the helm of the chaotic production, where through cinema she must make sense of her own relationship to Liberada and their legacy.

Paula Tomás Marques’s beguiling debut takes an inquisitive dive into the psychology of filmmaking and performance, asking critical questions on the ownership of storytelling. Through a blend of formal experiments and earnest playfulness shot on sunny 16mm, Liberada’s spirit and their place in trans history comes to life through João’s living, breathing present.

Synopsis

A vacuum factory is under pressure when a string of fatal workplace accidents leads to an unlikely phenomenon: deceased workers possessing machines and wreaking havoc on their operations. One particular soul—Nat, the young wife of the factory’s heir, killed by dust poisoning—is able to reunite with her grieving husband as a vacuum, reigniting their love stronger than ever. But faced with the fierce disapproval of her husband’s powerful family, Nat strives to be a polite and useful ghost, agreeing to help her in-laws exorcise the vacuum factory of its pesky lost souls. Her compassion for her fellow ghosts, however, illuminates the dark side of her work and the implications of forgetting those who are lost too soon.

A dazzling visual design, a penchant for deadpan whimsy, and an incisive focus on society’s marginalized are just a few of the colorful threads that form this genre-defying cinematic tapestry. An earnest exploration of loss and memory, this delightfully absurd phantasmagoric fable is equal parts witty, poignant, and heartbreaking.

Synopsis

On January 29, 2024, Red Crescent volunteers in Gaza field a call from a family trapped inside a car that is under Israeli military fire. Moments later, six-year-old Hind Rajab remains alone on the line, terrified and pleading for rescue. As the emergency volunteers keep her talking, dispatchers must determine if they will be able to send a rescue team across the embattled terrain to save her life.

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania (Four Daughters) recreates the unimaginably fraught situation in vivid detail for her groundbreaking feature The Voice of Hind Rajab, merging documentary and feature filmmaking techniques to tell the heartbreaking story of the emergency workers who tried to mount a rescue effort to save the girl’s life. Brilliantly marrying real-life recordings and scripted re-enactments pulled from transcripts and first-hand accounts—and casting actors who closely resemble the actual dispatchers—Ben Hania creates an unsettling verisimilitude.

Tense, urgent, and imminently compelling, The Voice of Hind Rajab embeds with the emergency workers as they attempt to comfort Hind, slowly realizing the impossible position they face. The film is a memorial to the courage of those first responders and a tribute to the life of a little girl whose name will not be forgotten.