Aphasia

A woman sits in a hospital room, alone with her dying father. As the din of hospital noises pushes her to confront her inevitable loss, she escapes into a series of lush childhood memories. 4 North A is a celebration of the fleeting joys of life and a bittersweet reminder that we don’t always get the closure we seek.

In this poetic short, animator Franck Dion (Edmond was a Donkey) invites us to share the journey of Jacqueline, an elderly woman living with degenerative dementia. Jacqueline isn’t quite in her right mind anymore, but she’s determined to take the train to the seaside, as she has done every summer. Only this year, she’s constantly being followed by some woman who claims to be her daughter, and the trip takes some unexpected and phantasmagorical turns.

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Co-produced by Papy3D Productions, the National Film Board of Canada and ARTE France.

When unexpected illness lands Uncle Bob in the hospital, he's transported from his safe and familiar surroundings to a foreign and chaotic new world. As his stay lengthens, his spirits and health decline until his former life is just a distant memory. It takes a special visit from a special visitor to motivate him to get well. This animated short is a charming look at the importance of cheer, hope and love in the healing process.

TRIGGER WARNING: This film contains the following subject matter: Suicide and self harm.
If you are affected by the topics addressed in the film, we encourage you to reach out to someone you trust.

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Shannon Amen unearths the passionate and pained expressions of a young woman overwhelmed by guilt and anxiety as she struggles to reconcile her sexual identity with her religious faith. A loving elegy to a friend lost to suicide.

I, Barnabé takes a luminous look at a desperate man’s existential crisis. During a night of stormy drunkenness, he receives a visit from a mysterious bird and is forced to reconsider his life.

Fusing elements of Kafka and Kubrick, Caterpillarplasty is a prescient, grotesque sci-fi satire that lifts plastic surgery to another level. A powerful and sardonic take on a social obsession with beauty that’s spiralled out of control.

In the voiceover for this animated short, a young woman attempts to describe herself, casting her life in the ideal light that society expects. The film’s imagery, however, tells a different story, poignantly illustrating the intense anxiety that comes with the quest for perfection and the pursuit of happiness. A film that’s both funny and moving, and above all, profoundly human.

What could the illness afflicting Henri Castagnette be? Filled with anxiety, the young man puts his fate in the hands of the off-puttingly exuberant Dr. Von Strudel. In The Turtle Syndrome, Samuel Cantin, author of the popular “motormouth” graphic novels Phobie des moments seuls and Whitehorse, recounts the story of an endearing anti-hero’s frenzied and hilarious medical appointment. Produced by the NFB, The Turtle Syndrome is part of the Comic Strip Chronicles collection.

A woman plays out her existence on the screen of her life. Alcohol is the essence of her being. She imbibes her youth and becomes completely absorbed by the desire to satisfy her thirst. Moving from parties to binge drinking, pleasure to distress, joy to delirium, she lets herself be lulled by the undulating waves of bottles. She floats in the intoxicating liquid, sees her childhood re-emerge, and feels as if she is a tiny fish lost in an ocean of madness. Her craving for alcohol engenders a burning passion. Drinking becomes a fatal embrace... On the verge of drowning in the torrent of this insane obsession, will she find the strength to rise to the surface?

Soif is a tragedy in five acts centered on a woman who must confront the fate of her existence. Michèle Cournoyer (The Hat) has created another hard-hitting film. She broaches a sensitive topic in her inimitable style, using black ink on paper to render dazzling metamorphoses.

Layering real-life details with an otherworldly magic, Thanadoula recounts the story of an end-of-life doula brought to her calling through the loss of her beloved sister.

This documentary introduces us to Stephen Jenkinson, once the leader of a palliative care counselling team at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital. Through his daytime job, he has been at the deathbed of well over 1,000 people. What he sees over and over, he says, is "a wretched anxiety and an existential terror" even when there is no pain. Indicting the practice of palliative care itself, he has made it his life's mission to change the way we die - to turn the act of dying from denial and resistance into an essential part of life.