MOTHER’S SKIN Director: Leah Johnston

Newfoundland, 1971. A neglected six-year-old girl struggles to cope with her mother’s depression and her father’s alcoholic rage.

CHASING BIRDS  Director: Una Lorenzen

When the world turns upside down, we have a choice to firmly hang on to old ideas in fear or embrace the new view. Chasing Birds is a symbolic story about a little girl who playfully chases a bird throughout a chaotic and transformational period.

FOR ROY Director: Vivian Cheung

Legend says folding a thousand paper cranes will give a person one wish. For young Celeste, it was for her dying father to be there on her birthday. Inspired by the true events of one Chinese-Canadian family, using the power of imagination and the art of origami, she grapples with the reality of losing her father in the hospice.

OVERGROWN Director: Cailleah Scott-Grimes

Elderly Margo is devastated by her sudden eviction. When she stumbles upon a dead mouse under the floorboards, she begins to reconsider what is treasure and what is trash.

OUR HIGHEST PRIORITY Director: Daniel Karan and Emma Macklin

A short film about a mentally ill undergrad student desperately trying to get help from her school.

DREAM ON LÉON  Director: Roger Gariépy

Léon is old; his body is letting him down. And so, he sleeps. Yet above all, Léon dreams. Of love and sausages, of freedom and running wild. A real dog’s life.

BLOOMING Director: Zach Closs

The story of a young couple linked by trauma and cryptic tattoos, across summer, fall, and winter.

SPLIT ENDS Director: Alireza Kazemipour

A bald girl and a young boy with long hair whose car has been confiscated due to lack of proper hijab are trying to solve their problem with the Tehran Morality Police without paying a fine.

BELLE RIVER Director: Guillaume Fournier, Samuel Matteau, and Yannick Nolin

Belle River is a film about Louisiana and its peaceful inhabitants, both threatened with extinction by a serious climate crisis.