Links to films will be available March 9th @ 9:00AM EST (North America) until March 16th @ 11:30PM EST. Click on a title below to watch or browse the festival channel on ResearchTV!

100 ᐊᕐᕌᒍᐃᑦ ᓇᓅᑉ ᑭᖑᓂᖓᓂ — A Century After Nanook

87min | United States
Directed by Kirk French
A Century After Nanook is an ambitious documentary focused on the drastic environmental and cultural changes that have occurred over the last 100 years in the Inuit village of Inukjuak, the location where Robert Flaherty filmed Nanook of the North from 1920-1921. From the recording of interviews to filming daily life, much of this documentary was produced by members of the community – making it truly a collaborative project.

AI in the Street: Drone Observatory

13min | Australia
Directed by Thao Phan, Jeni Lee
Logan is one of the world’s largest drone delivery trial sites. What do locals feel about the presence of commercial and autonomous drone delivery systems in their neighbourhood?

Albedo — In Search of a Frozen Ocean

56min | Canada
Directed by Stephen A. Smith
Steve is an expedition leader who has been exploring the High Arctic for decades. Chris is a young oceanographer who studies the world’s oldest ice floes from a Harvard lab. They know the data, the models, the science. It’s all dire. None of it has prepared them for the truth on the ground as they set course on a rare expedition inside the “Last Ice Area”. The old ice is gone. Against brutal conditions the science is scuttled, their expedition team bearing witness to Earth’s most pressing existential threat even as they struggle for their own survival.

Bajando por la Montaña: Ecology of Colombian Gaita Music

54min | Colombia
Directed by Michael Brims, Jaime Bofill
Gaita is played with two flutes and three percussions in a group. The music combines both indigenous Native American and traditional African elements. The filmmakers follow Latin Grammy-award-winning gaitero Fredys Arrieta both into the Colombian mountains Montes de Maria and in the metropolis Bogota. The mountains are both where the origin of this music lie and where Fredys sources, in an ecological way, the raw materials for his instrument making. In Bogota, a much younger generation has found an interest in this traditional music from the coastal region of Colombia and has made it “trendy” in the city’s clubs.

Bridges to the North

90min | Canada
Directed by Tony McGuire
A Marten Falls and Webequie First Nation story about their quest to bring roads into their communities while facing up to pandemics of suicide, food, and standards of living. A story about the “Ring of Fire.”

Bring Them Home

85min | United States
Directed by Ivan MacDonald, Ivy MacDonald, Daniel Glick
Bring Them Home tells the story of a small group of Blackfoot people and their mission to establish the first wild buffalo herd on their ancestral territory since the species’ near-extinction a century ago, an act that would restore the land, re-enliven traditional culture and bring much needed healing to their community.
*only available for viewing in Canada

Carousel of Time

36min | Canada
Directed by Adrien Harpelle
“The Carousel of Time” is a historical documentary about the restoration and preservation of a 104- year-old carousel located in Thunder Bay on the shore of Lake Superior. For several generations, children have ridden the wooden carousel horses at Thunder Bay’s Chippewa Park and, although the horses are forever frozen in their stride, their carnival colours dulled, the wood chipped and on some cracked down to the hindquarters, they remain a fixture of summer recreation at the Lakehead. It is a film that celebrates art and artists. Generations of Thunder Bay residents have visited the park and taken a ride on the carousel. As such, the carousel is a time machine for many people today.

Decolonizing Our Youth

58min | Canada
Directed by Lyndon Suntjens
How can we rethink our Education system? Can we trade cinder block square classrooms for the open skies and river valleys of our ancestors? Come join our land based classroom as we meet various Indigenous Knowledge Keepers and Elders that will share the importance of the traditional land, culture, and the language here on amiskwaciy-wâskahikan (Beaver Hills House), also known as Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. They are all wonderful and amazing storytellers and this is our gift to you, a collaboration of incredible Indigenous people working together to pass on our collective knowledge to future generations, students and viewers alike.
Are you ready to decolonize your learning and come be a student with us?

Dionewar Solidarité – or how to involve everybody

8min | Germany
Directed by Ilja Mlosch
In many areas of Africa, there is a long tradition of solidarity. All inhabitants are involved in deciding what is good for the community. With the help of modern media like WhatsApp, necessary projects are discussed, selected and finally organised and realised by hundreds of participants. And everyone pitches in!

Discarnate: McLuhan’s Wake

16min | Canada
Directed by Gordon David Pepper
This experimental documentary film explores the unique personality and intellectual brilliance of Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan, including his uncanny predictions regarding the effects of communication technologies on culture and society.

Feeling the Apocalypse

7min | Canada
Directed by Chen Sing Yap
A psychotherapist struggling with climate anxiety explores what it means to live in a dying world.

I am Kanaka

15min | United Kingdom
Directed by Genevieve Sulway
A local Hawaiian hero fights to save his culture by teaching traditions, sustainability and life skills to disadvantaged indigenous kids.

ᒪᕐᕋᓕᒃ / MARRALIK / Where There is Mud

47min | Canada
Directed by Iphigénie Marcoux-Fortier, Nunami Sukuijainiq
Since 2016, the community of Kangiqsualujjuaq in Nunavik and university researchers have co-constructed an environmental monitoring program around land-based camps. A series of three documentary works – MARRALIK (2023), AKILASAALUK (2024) and QAMANIALUK (2024) was born from these knowledge sharing experiences.

Monica in the South Seas

72min | Finland
Directed by Sami van Ingren, Mika Taanila
Return to a childhood paradise. A film about Monica Flaherty’s ambitious quest in the 1970s to create a perfect sound version of the silent feature film Moana (1926) directed by her parents Robert and Frances Flaherty in Samoa.

Moonshot Mission

17min | Netherlands
Directed by Sara Kolster
Quantum scientist and former hacker Stephanie Wehner is on a mission to develop the worlds’ first operational quantum internet network before 2030. A daunting task, which some would even call crazy, but Wehner believes she can do it – not only by writing scientific articles, but simply by building it.

Night Towns

7min | United Kingdom
Directed by Jeremy Clancy
This film showcases how the evening and the night should be taken seriously by urban planners in the bid to regenerate town centres.

Pennsylvania: A Keystone for Wildlife

35min | United States
Directed by Tracy Graziano
Pennsylvania encompasses some of the most diverse habitat types in the country due to varying geography: from the ridge and valley mountains cutting diagonally across the state, to upper Piedmont, wetlands, grassland, riparian areas, and even beaches in the Northwest. The variety here is remarkable and as a result, our state is diverse with wildlife.

Rust in Soils – What happens when microorganisms breathe iron?

14min | Germany
Directed by Markus Tischner
When soils are flooded, they are lacking oxygen. Then, some microorganisms “breathe” iron, causing mineral transformations. This science communication film introduces a novel research approach for investigating iron mineral transformations in soils directly in the field, which has previously been possible only in the laboratory. It demonstrates the new method step-by-step and shows how the scientists apply it in the field. The viewer also learns about the relevance of iron mineral transformations for the environment. The research is part of an ERC-funded project (IRMIDYN) conducted by the Soil Chemistry Group at D-USYS, ETH Zurich, Switzerland.

A Second Chance

7min | Canada
Directed by Donna Ross
Second Chance is a short documentary featuring Jenn Salo’s dream to create a wildlife sanctuary in Northern Ontario. Featured in this short is the importance of caring for our wildlife, and the challenges involved. When we take care of the wildlife, we receive gifts of nature in return. This film was made as part of the Flash Frame Film & Video Network 2023 Docs North workshop.

Shitty Little

6min | Canada
Directed by Jeff McKay, Takashi Iwasaki Iwasaki
This playful, poignant & very memorable 7 min live action-animation shadow play, where humans take from forests whatever they desire – leaving nothing. In western culture there is no value attributed to nature. It must be taken and shaped into a product for sale to have worth. A prevalent societal attitude: How a meadow, a marsh, or a small wood “Isn’t doing anything”, and should be, “Made into something”.

Signal Fire: Towards Reconciliation

30min | Canada
Directed by Kelly Milner
Signal Fire is a 30-minute educational documentary filmed in university labs and field research sites across Canada that features stories from the scientists and community members – Indigenous and non-Indigenous – looking to ignite change and light a new path for natural resource studies in this country.

Silent Cries (Kiayunik Tuhanak)

16min | Canada
Directed by Navalik Tologanak
“It happened every year during long weekends in September. That’s when all the planes, little planes start flying around Nunavut and NWT (North-Western Territory) collecting kids at camps. As soon as you hear that plane coming around you know what was gonna happen, some of them hide, run away… But the parents were always threatened if their kids didn’t get on that plane. All you could hear was mothers, grandmothers crying.” Navalik Tologanak (Netflix-BANFF Diversity of Voices 2023 Alumni), journalist and emerging filmmaker shares her experience as a residential school survivor. Silent Cries (Kiayunik Tuhanak) documents the private meeting between Pope Francis and Inuit survivors on their land in July 2022. As a respected Elder, Navalik weaves her personal story into the narrative to bring an intimate perspective to a historic event and what followed.

The Underground Astronaut

17min | Netherlands
Directed by Marleine van der Werf
Beneath our feet lies a mystery. A complex underground network of fungi keeps our ecosystem alive by exchanging nutrients and carbon with plants and trees. Remarkably, no one quite knows how these advanced and age-old systems operate, and how they are affected by climate change. The Underground Astronaut follows the American evolutionary biologist Toby Kiers, named one of the 2022 TIME100 Next Innovators, on her quest to map the world’s fungi networks and understand their behaviour before it’s too late. A fragrant and high-stakes journey into the soil. “No fungi, no future.”

The Faraway Nearby

78min | United States
Directed by Paula M. Froehle
The Faraway Nearby follows the tragic life of pioneer physicist Joseph Weber, whose pursuit of gravitational waves takes him on a dizzying journey from the height of acclaim to the depths of despair and disdain when he breaks the cardinal rule of science and clings to his ideas though his results can’t be duplicated. Physicists, artists, and other creatives explore the emotional side of discovery and question whether the risk is worth the journey.

The Waste Commons

58min | United States, Senega
Directed by Rosalind Fredericks, Sarita West
Enclosing open-air dumps and outlawing waste picking are key approaches to modernizing cities around the world. THE WASTE COMMONS explores the dramatic transformations involved in the impending redevelopment of the city waste dump in Dakar, Senegal, and the lives that hang in the balance. It follows charismatic Zidane, trailblazing Adja, and their waste picker community, as they battle to defend their carefully crafted worlds and rights to waste.

What is Blasto?

2min | Canada
Directed by Kelly Saxberg
Public service announcement about Blastomycosis. Created in English and Ojibwe