Luchina Fisher | USA | 72 min 
Co-presented by The Biking Lawyer
Time: 7:15pm
Venue: EL Fox ♿
Tickets: $20/PWYW

EVENT: TRANSlate

Feature Film Screening:  Inspired by the Emmy Award-winning short documentary of the same name (Netflix, 2023), THE DADS chronicles a community of fathers of trans and nonbinary children as they are forced to choose family over country as a powerful anti-trans agenda takes hold in the United States. Filmed over the course of a year spanning retreats in rural Maine and Minnesota, protests, family milestones, a pivotal U.S. Supreme Court decision, and the collapse of gender-affirming care for youth, THE DADS captures this national reckoning with remarkable intimacy through verité footage and interviews with the film’s main protagonists, as documented by Emmy Award-winning director and producer Luchina Fisher and executive producer Dwyane Wade. This is fatherhood as an act of radical love and resistance.

Post-Film: An intergenerational storytelling talk back about the places where cultures, contexts, and communities collide to remember, affirm, and archive.

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Aldira Akay, Beka Munduruku and Rilcélia Akay - The Daje Kapap Eypi Collective | BRAZIL | 72 min
Co-presented by Silence
Co-Presented by Hot Docs
Time: 11:30am
Venue: Silence
Tickets: $15/PWYW

Feature Film Screening: On the banks of the Tapajós River, in the Amazon, the forest of fish women reflects Munduruku mythology, where humans, at the origin of the world, transformed into forest, plants and animals. In the daily life of the Sawre Muybu village, the spirits of the forest are not only ancestral spiritual forces, but part of the family.

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CANADA | 90 min | Partial Subtitles
Co-presented by Silence
Co-presented by Ed Video
Time: 2:30pm
Venue: Silence
Tickets: $15/PWYW

Canadian showcase - What is home? How do we remain rooted in a changing world? How do we connect to our community and our environment?

A Place Called Home
Suzanne Crocker | CANADA | 25 min
*Ontario Premiere*

Out on the Water
Anushay Sheikh & Cathy van Ingen | Canada | 8 min

Own Kind of Beautiful
Sarah Jones | CANADA | 28 min
*Ontario Premiere*

An Uncertain Eternity
Ella Morton | CANADA | 29 min

Lemonade Stand
Paul O’Bomsawin | CANADA | 5 min

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Semillites Hernandez Velasco & Tania Hernandez Velasco | MEXICO | 83 min | CAPTIONS
Co-presented by The Kween Company
In Partnership with the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation
Supported by DiverseWorksCo and Queer Night Out
Time: 7:00pm
Venue: The ImprovLab
Tickets: $20/PWYW

EVENT: Our body is an expanding star: Earth-Body-Home

Pre-Film: A 5-minute breathwork session centering our bodies from the outside world and into our own world.

Feature Film Screening: Semillites and Tania, two queer siblings bound by a powerful friendship, journey through the brown terrain of their own bodies - lands they once rejected. They traverse landscapes of skin, dreams and viscera, crossing into places that pulse with their ancestors’ memory and, along the way, encounter a constellation of flowers, grasshoppers and fossils. Through collage, animation, manifesto, dance and intimacy, the film moves across scales of body and territory, reimagining identity beyond Mexico’s colonial narratives.

Post-Film: Stars, gardens, expansion, and us - an anchored meditation and group reading. 

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CANADA | 40 min | Ages 4-12
Supported by Art Not Shame
Time: 11:30am
Venue: Art Not Shame
Tickets: $5 Adults/ Kids Free

EVENT: Meet our local kid filmmakers.

Screening: A series of micro-docs made by local kid filmmakers, paired with thoughtful and fun short animated films for the whole family.

TINY DOCS BY TINY PEOPLE

Tiny Doc Titles Coming Soon

MORNING CARTOONS

Flic Flaque
Monique Motut Firth | CANADA | 6 min

Springrise
Mitchell Keys | CANADA | 3 min

Azuki
Astrid Rothaug | Austria | 3 min

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Min Sook Lee | CANADA| 98 min
Supported by  Art Not Shame
Co-Presented by Ed Video
Time: 2:30 PM
Venue: Art Not Shame
Tickets: $15/PWYW

EVENT: The Stories We Survive

Feature Film Screening: There Are No Words is a film about family, memory and cultural identity. I’m 51 and my dad nears 90. Like most children, I’m wholly unprepared for a final goodbye. A generation of people like my dad will die and it is as though our libraries are burning. Knowledge will go with them, and with that knowledge, the sense of identity, purpose and direction for the future.

Post-Film: A discussion with director Min Sook Lee and grief coach, Tara Porter.

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Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman | CANADA | 90 min | Partial Subtitles
Co-presented by Alice Street Realty 
Co-presented by The Arboretum, University of Guelph
Time: 7:00pm
Venue: The Arboretum
Tickets: $20/PWYW

EVENT: The Charisma Factor: How we perceive and protect animals

Feature Film Screening: A polar bear's traditional migration path leads it into populated areas, sparking conflict between human interests and wild nature as the animal struggles to survive in a changing world.

Post-Film: Join us after the film as we honour the emotional themes within the film, and welcome a panel to discuss local animal/human interactions.

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Industry Night Workshop
From Film to Audience: Marketing, Distribution & Release
With Danny Costa
In Partnership with 10C
Time: 7:00pm
Venue: 10C Shared Space, Heritage Room
Tickets: $75 Full Price, Student Rate $40 with PWYW

How does a film find its audience? This practical workshop explores today’s film distribution landscape, from festivals and theatrical screenings to streaming and digital release. Participants will learn how marketing, audience development, release strategy, and revenue intersect, with specific consideration given to both documentary and narrative filmmaking—and how thinking about distribution early can strengthen a film’s path to audiences.

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Malaya Qaunirq Chapman | CANADA | 52 min | Captions
Co-presented by The Arrell Family Foundation
In Partnership with Habitat for Humanity Guelph Wellington ReStore
Time: 7:00pm
Venue: ReStore: Habitat for Humanity
Tickets: $20/PWYW

EVENT: Nourishing Community: Food Security, Sovereignty and the Right to Eat

Feature Film Screening: On the edge of the Arctic Ocean, the community of Taloyoak, Nunavut, is working to feed its families. Soaring grocery prices and the high cost of hunting and travel in the North leave many households facing food insecurity. Nirilaurta tells the story of a community that draws on Inuit culture, land-based knowledge and kinship to nourish their bodies, spirits and one another.

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Anik Salas | CANADA | 93 min
Co-presented by The Art Gallery of Guelph
Time: 7:00pm
Venue: Art Gallery of Guelph
Tickets: $20/PWYW

EVENT: Meritocracy, my ass!

Feature Film Screening: What if equality came with an instruction manual? From Iceland to Sweden, via Norway, Quebec filmmaker Anik Salas sets out to uncover the mystery behind the world champions of gender equality. Why these countries? What have they understood that Canada has yet to grasp? Through inspiring encounters with female politicians, executives and grassroots organizers who have dared to challenge the rules, the film reveals how these societies have transformed power. This is not feminism for show. It is rooted in political will, concrete strategies and a shared conviction that change requires patience and persistence.

Moving between investigation, travelogue and manifesto, The Scandinavian Method does more than condemn. It issues a clear invitation to all who refuse to accept the status quo. An urgent, fiercely committed film that insists equality cannot wait another century.  

Post-Film: A participatory panel about gender parity, power, leadership, workplace culture, and the barriers that still shape who gets heard, trusted, promoted, and taken seriously.

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Lev Omelchenko & Nolan Huber | USA | 99 min 
Co-presented by OPIRG
Time: 7:00pm
Venue: Guelph Youth Music Centre
Tickets: $20/PWYW

EVENT: Transformative Justice Here & Now

Feature Film Screening: When a police unit in Atlanta moves to raze an urban forest for the country's largest police training facility, a grassroots movement fights to defend the land. In this startling unconventional and frankly radical feature debut, directors Lev Omelchenko and Nolan Huber embed their camera within the protests, capturing a diverse, decentralised resistance that connects environmental racism, political corruption, police violence and the criminalisation of dissent. What emerges is a collective portrait of one of America's most urgent social justice stories, where the fight to save a forest becomes about something much bigger. 

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INTERNATIONAL | 78 min | Partial Subtitles
Co-presented by Guelph Civic Museum
Co-Presented by Ed Video
Time: 11:30am
Venue: Guelph Civic Museum
Tickets: $15/PWYW

This international short film showcase looks at support, solidarity, and community in times of upheaval, war, and environmental or social change.

and the story remains
Darya Maljesi | CANADA | 6 min
*World Premiere*

Eighteen Mill Street 
Josh Weissbach | SWEDEN | 14 min

Listen 
Malakye Tsosie | USA | 16 min

AXOMAMA 
Tracy Valcárcel | CANADA | 26 min

Fragment on War 
Nikolas Candido | BRAZIL | 15 min

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Slts'Lani Banchi Hanuse | CANADA | 84 min 
Co-presented by ArtsEverywhere Festival
Co-presented by Guelph Civic Museum
Co-presented by Hot Docs
Time: 2:30pm
Venue: Guelph Civic Museum
Tickets: $15/PWYW

Feature Film Screening:  Through ramshackled Nuxalk Radio, the disappearance of the ooligan from the Bella Coola River reveals a buried history deeper than the river itself. 

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Aziz Zoromba | CANADA | 110 min | Partial Subtitles
Co-presented by RahrBSG 
Supported by Olive Haven
Time: Pre-film Event 6:30 & Film 7:30pm
Venue: Guelph Youth Music Centre
Tickets: $20/PWYW

EVENT: A Celebration of Food

Pre-Film: Sample the flavours of Palestine and celebrate the community together with wonderful conversations and delicious bites on our final festival night.

Feature Film Screening:LOUF follows celebrated Palestinian chef Fadi Kattan and Toronto-based couple Nicole and Faraj, parents to five Palestinian daughters, as they embark on an ambitious and deeply personal mission: Opening LOUF, a Palestinian restaurant in the heart of Toronto.  

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