Other films on this theme
Itchombi
Gentille Assih Menguizani
In a village in the Keran region of Togo, the Itchombi, a circumcision ritual that brings together the entire Solla ethnic group, takes place. Itchombi refers to the knives, the young men and the ritual. Déou and his family prepare for this ceremony by scrupulously respecting the traditions. However, this year they want sanitary measures to be taken to avoid possible STD or HIV contamination. This debate is running through the entire community as they prepare for the celebration.
Akpéma
Gentille Assih Menguizani
The Akpéma is a ritual, in Kabiè country (northern Togo), during which older women take charge of adolescent girls to instruct them and teach them how to become worthy and mature women. The Akpéma is like a spinning wheel for me. As a child, I learned that my great-grandmother’s great-grandmother had done it. I am from the 1995 Akpema class and today it is my little sister Aïcha’s turn. Accompanying my sister in her initiation is an opportunity for me to discover the changes that have taken place in this ceremony since the time when I lived it…
Le Rite, la Folle et Moi
Gentille Assih Menguizani
The Akpéma is a ritual in Kabié country (northern Togo) in which older women teach young girls how to become worthy and mature women. During her initiation, director Gentille Assih Menguizani learned secrets about her grandmother’s history. She also understood why her father mistreated her. Today, chosen as the godmother for her little sister’s Akpéma, it is up to her to pass on to her this story that she has carried within her, as a woman carries a baby within her. The Rite, the Madwoman and Me is a story of transmission, an opportunity to understand the weight of tradition and the complexity of African cultures. It is above all an opportunity for two sisters to erase the insult that taints their grandmother’s descent.
Arlette
Mariloup Wolfe
Approached by the Prime Minister of Quebec to rejuvenate the image of his government, Arlette Saint-Amour, director of a fashion magazine, becomes Minister of Culture overnight. She succeeded in creating a real buzz around Culture with her look and her audacity. Bold, she does not hesitate to confront the most powerful of them all: the Minister of Finance. Their files are battles to be fought, but their confrontation is a real war to be finished because, at the end of the day, this film revolves around a great theme: the power of the image. A comedy of appearances that takes us behind the scenes of the National Assembly, where the zany meets the serious, where comedy embraces drama.
Le grand move
Mariloup Wolfe
This documentary series follows families from large urban centers who have chosen to settle in the regions in search of a better quality of life. Behind the camera and in the field, Mariloup Wolfe meets these families and reveals the thoughts, steps, paths and decisions of these neo-ruralists. Through a series of portraits, viewers discover the pros and cons of life outside the big city.
Jouliks
Mariloup Wolfe
A couple died by drowning. A news item that will be reported in the newspapers. Refusing to let her parents be reduced to this drama, Yanna, their seven-year-old daughter, tells us their true story, one that is not a tragedy, but above all a love story. Through her luminous story, we learn the details of a life that was meant to be free of convention and preconceived ideas.
Les pieds dans le vide
Mariloup Wolfe
Three friends meet one summer at a skydiving center. Adventurous, they spend most of their time jumping – jumping for the thrill, jumping to forget, jumping to escape what haunts them. Rafael, 20 years old, dreams of becoming a pilot; Manu, 19 years old, has to take care of her mother who suffers from cancer; and Charles, 30 years old, owns the skydiving center. In his own way, he tries to keep order and prevent his daredevil friends from getting hurt, while becoming more and more attached to Manu, with whom he develops a romantic relationship. A newcomer joins the group, Ludo, a shy young stranger trying to discover who he really is. Quickly, several trials will upset the eventful life of each one, shaking the foundations of the solid trio formed by Rafaël, Manu and Charles.
Le chant d’une soeur
Danae Elon
Can we really know what is in the heart of our loved one? A Sister’s Song is the intimate and delicate story of two sisters, Marina and Tatiana, who live apart because of the choice Tatiana made in becoming a nun. Marina, who has hardly seen or spoken to her sister in twenty years, feels that something is wrong. She travels to a monastery in Greece to try to find the sister she has lost. An unexpected event will lead both of them on a path they never thought possible.
Never Again Forever
Danae Elon
This powerful film about the Jewish Defense League traces the militant group’s history from the streets of Brooklyn where it originated to the Occupied Territories where it flourishes today, painting a disturbing portrait of a cycle of hate born in the ashes of the Holocaust.
Another Road Home
Danae Elon
Shortly after the Six-Day War in 1967, Danae Elon’s highly educated parents, noted Israeli author Amos Elon, and former correspondent and literary agent Beth Elon, hired a Palestinian man named Musa, the father of eleven children, to take care of their six month old daughter on a daily basis. It was a job he would continue for the next twenty years until she was grown and he was able to save enough money to send all eight of his sons to America for education and career opportunities. The last time Danae saw Musa, in 1991, he proudly showed her the house he constructed in the Palestinian village of Battir. Then, against the mounting tensions of the Israeli occupation and the Palestinian Intifada, the two families lost track of each other. During that time Danae began to realize how much of an influence Musa had on her life and sought to reconnect with him. Her quest led her from her home in New York to Paterson, New Jersey, then to Battir in the occupied territories, and back to her…
Partly Private
Danae Elon
To circumcise or not to circumcise, that is the question pondered by filmmaker and future mother Danae Elon and her husband Philippe. The couple, who hope to discover the sex of their baby at birth, are on two sides of the issue. Philippe, who is himself circumcised and a Jew of Algerian decent, explains that it is a cultural tradition for him. For Danae, submitting a newborn to this ritual would be absurd and irrational. This documentary follows her humorous and instructive exploration of this practice. In her quest she will meet rabbis, imams, doctors, theologians and parents. She will discover that myths and rituals in many great cultures and religions surround these few centimeters of skin.
The Patriarch’s Room
Danae Elon
“Jaffa Gate Is Ours!” screamed the headlines in 2005. Greek Orthodox Patriarch Irineos was accused of selling church property to Jewish settlers. He denied all the accusations. But for the first time in the church’s 2000-year history, its leader was ousted. For 11 long years, Irineos was imprisoned in his chambers. In this first-person account, filmmaker Danae Elon unravels what really happened to the former Patriarch. With unprecedented access to the inner workings of the church, a riveting, mysterious, disturbing, and often humorous story is revealed about an unknown world within the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City.
P.S. Jerusalem
Danae Elon
Filmmaker Danae Elon began to film her three young sons the moment she and her partner Philip decided to leave New York and return to Jerusalem. The decision was prompted by the death of her father, leading Israeli intellectual and writer Amos Elon It was his dying wish that Danae not return, but her attachment to the place she always called home was stronger. On a journey back Danae’s camera captures her three young boys growing up, asking endless questions and confronting the reality around them The place she once saw as “home” challenges her relationship with her partner and the future of her kids It is through the prism of parenthood, children and a family that the story of this film exposes a deep, complex and painful portrait of Jerusalem today.
Primas
Laura Bari
Primas is a moving portrait of cousins Rocío and Aldana, two Argentinean teenagers who, after suffering violence that abruptly ended their childhood, free themselves from the spectre of their past. Traveling through Argentina and Montreal, the girls enter adulthood through eye-opening experiences such as learning dance, mime, theater, circus and visual arts. Their bodies become the expression of their imagination, their unique perspective and their unfailing resilience.
Une colonie
Geneviève Dulude-De Celles
Camille wanders through the countryside talking with frogs and chickens: she sails through life as a carefree soul. But for her older sister, the introverted Mylia, things are more complicated. Mylia is lost between the uncertainty in her family life, the superficial atmosphere at her new school and her first experiences at house parties. It is Camille who eventually introduces Mylia to Jimmy. The boy from the nearby Abenaki reserve is different and he encourages her to break free.
Bienvenue à F.L.
Geneviève Dulude-De Celles
Welcome to F.L. offers a candid portrait of the smart, passionate and reflective students at a typical Quebec high school as they reach the end of their teenage years and contemplate the lives that lie ahead for them. With the students of Fernand-Lefebvre high school.
La coupe
Geneviève Dulude-De Celles
When Fannie offers her father to cut his hair, he accepts. Alain knows that his daughter will do it carefully and thoroughly, as usual. But an outside incident change their plans and confront the precariousness of this shared moment. The cut tells the story of a father and a daughter, between proximity and detachment, for the moment of an haircut.
Janette et filles
Léa Clermont-Dion
What has Janette Bertrand accomplished, what has she contributed to change in a lasting way? She has been a journalist, an actress, a screenwriter, an author, a psychologist… Through her fight to make her place, she has given a voice to all those who were refused to be heard, to the point of becoming a model for several generations of women who, in turn, inspire the next ones. All of them, Janette’s daughters: Guylaine Tremblay, Martine Delvaux, Noémi Mercier, Kim Lizotte, Claudia Larochelle, Régine Bertheau, Chris Bergeron and Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay.
Antoine
Laura Bari
Antoine is five years old and he is blind. A sensitive and poetical portrait of the real and imaginary life of Antoine, a boy detective who runs, drives, hosts radio shows and adores simultaneous telephone conversations. Over the course of two years he uses a mini-boom microphone to discover and capture the sounds surrounding him. In this manner he co-created the sound track of this film. This child, who is of Vietnamese origin, was born one hundred days prematurely. He is integrated into the regular school system in Montreal, with unprecedented success.
Lignes de fuite
Myriam Bouchard
A dramatic comedy that invites us to the eventful reunion of three high school friends. After a festive and drunken start to the evening, the trio of thirty-somethings unravels: old tensions resurface, discussions escalate and revelations follow one another – all of which form an increasingly explosive cocktail that will test their friendship to the limit. Can yesterday’s best friends still be friends today?
Mon cirque à moi
Myriam Bouchard
Born into a family of circus performers, Laura has spent much of her young life on tour with her father Bill, a professional clown, and his stage hand, Mandeep. Secretly, she yearns for a more conventional life. Thanks to her new teacher, Patricia, she can finally fulfill her dream: to go to private school. Having spotted her new pupil’s enormous potential, Patricia helps Laura pass her entrance exams. This act is a form of rebellion against her father… Can bohemian Bill, a self-proclaimed nonconformist, accept that the apple of his eye has fallen so far from the paternal tree?
Ariel
Laura Bari
At the age of 33 Ariel’s legs are shredded by an industrial dough mixer. Ariel confronts his tremendous metamorphosis, learning how to be with others, while he invents his own prosthetic legs in Mendoza, Argentina. Through this metaphorical and intimate portrait, Laura Bari reveals a decade of Ariel’s struggle towards a new trans-humanity.
Roastbeef
Myriam Bouchard
The strange noise from a butcher’s knife excites the woman of his dreams to dance… Secret love, loneliness, and missed connections… In one dance…
T’as juste à porter plainte
Léa Clermont-Dion
This documentary focuses on Léa Clermont-Dion’s quest to understand the crossroads experienced by victims of sexual assault within the justice system. In parallel to the trying procedures she herself underwent, the filmmaker meets a dozen victims. The film echoes the painful scratches and collateral damage, consequences of an imperfect process. One thing is for sure: head high or low, victims rarely come out unscathed. Victims are often told that they should just file a complaint. But what if it’s not that simple? In this intimate and emotional documentary, Léa meets those who, in addition to saying “me too”, have taken this path of the cross. The goal is to give the microphone to those whose voices have been silenced by the justice system. How do they fare in practice? Guided by the experience of Léa who filed a complaint for a sexual assault suffered at the age of 17 during her first student job, T’as juste à porter plainte is punctuated by interviews with other victims and legal experts.