La Fin d'un long silence

This short documentary follows Montreal filmmaker Eylem Kaftan as she travels to Turkey in an attempt to unravel the 30-year-old mystery of her aunt Guzide's murder. As she searches for clues and closure, she encounters antiquated customs in a Kurdish culture she's never known. She knows that her aunt was the victim of a senseless vendetta killing and as she ventures from village to village she pieces together the woman’s final days and closes in on the identity of her killer. Vendetta Song is produced by DLI Productions in co-production with the NFB.

Marguerite Paquin lives in a seniors’ home where 14 nuns from her religious congregation have succumbed to COVID-19. The film takes us from the grandeur of the landscapes of Côte-Nord, Quebec, where Marguerite has worked for 47 years, into the room where she sits confined today, finding a sort of liberation through prayer and unshakeable solidarity with her sisters who are suffering.

This feature-length film tells the story of the passion between Marie de l’Incarnation, a mid-seventeenth-century nun and God, her "divine spouse." Fusing documentary and acting by Marie Tifo, whom we follow as she rehearses for this demanding role, the film paints an astonishing portrait of this mystic who abandoned her son and left France to build a convent in Canada, where she became the first female writer in New France.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead is a two-part series that explores ancient teachings on death and dying. It was filmed over a four-month period on location in the Himalayas where the original text still yields an essential influence over people's views of life and death. The Great Liberation, is a docudrama which, in the company of an old Buddhist lama and a 13-year-old novice monk, leads us into the very foundations of Buddhist philosophy--the search for compassion and truth. Pema Choden, the lama, and Tubten, the young monk, read from the texts of The Tibetan Book of the Dead as they conduct the 49 days of final rites for a deceased Himalayan villager. We must all face the death of somebody we love, as well as our own death. This film helps us to prepare for these inevitabilities.

In this feature-length documentary, filmmaker Patricio Henriquez seeks to untangle the web of lies surrounding the Chilean navy's training vessel, the Esmeralda. Heralded as a symbol of national pride, a dark secret lies behind the facade of the ship the Chileans call The White Lady: Following the 1973 coup d'état, it was used as a floating prison. Thirty years later, the victims of the dictatorship are demanding justice. The Dark Side of the White Lady is a fascinating journey to uncover the truth.

Many Black, racialized and immigrant women work with elderly patients as healthcare providers. Their jobs, already arduous and underpaid as it is, have become even more exhausting during the COVID-19 pandemic. While some public commentators have described them as overrepresented in this sector because of their culture, and hailed them as “guardian angels,” what do they themselves have to say? This cross-sectional portrait of some of these women takes the form of a meditative essay.

This feature documentary explores the state of prostitution laws in Canada. It captures the complexity of the issue by listening to the frequently conflicting voices of sex workers, policy-makers, lawyers, and even the male buyers who make their argument for why prostitution is good for society. Warning: This film deals with mature subject matter. Viewer discretion is advised.

Following the release of Buying Sex, Professor Alan Young, counsel for the applicants in Bedford v. Canada and a participant in the film, contacted the NFB to complain that the film provides an incomplete and inaccurate account of the case. The NFB acknowledges that the constitutional challenge is not the focus of the film. Rather, the aim of the film is to examine the current controversy in Canada around the decriminalization of prostitution, of which the Bedford case is one aspect. The goal is to create a film which encourages Canadians to engage in an informed debate about sex work from a national and international perspective. The NFB believes the film achieves this purpose. In the spirit of furthering an informed debate on these issues, including the constitutional challenge, and in response to Prof. Young's concerns, the NFB provides below links to the legal briefs filed by the parties before the Supreme Court of Canada as well as links to the judgments of all three Canadian Courts. The third judgment, from the Supreme Court of Canada, was released in December 2013, following the completion of the film. The Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional the three prostitution related laws challenged by Prof. Young, but suspended its judgment for one year to allow Parliament to consider whether to enact new laws, thus ensuring that the debate surrounding the decriminalization of prostitution will continue in Canada for some time.

Legal Briefs Filed by the Parties in the Supreme Court of Canada

Judgments from the Trial Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court of Canada

Canada (Attorney General) v. Bedford, 2013 SCC 72 (Supreme Court of Canada)

Canada (Attorney General) v. Bedford, 2012 ONCA 186 (Court of Appeal for Ontario)

Bedford v. Canada, 2010 ONSC 4264 (CanLII) (Superior Court of Ontario)

In this feature documentary, a remarkable group of young Afghan women dream of representing their country as boxers at the 2012 Olympics, embarking on a journey of both personal and political transformation.

This film tells the moving story of one woman fighting for her rights and preserving her dignity. Made as part of the Work for All project in 2006, an NFB and HRSDC-Labour initiative to combat racism in the workplace. In French with English subtitles.

One year after the tragedy that took the lives of fourteen female students, Montreal’s École Polytechnique has returned to something resembling normalcy. Nathalie Provost is a survivor of the shooting at the engineering school. Today, with friends, she opens up. About the tragedy, about feminism. About racism and sexism. About the fact that society has difficulty accepting difference. And, above all, about life, which must go on beyond December 6.

In 1903, a unique and magnificent Whaler's shrine was shipped from Friendly Cove, on the far northwest coast of Canada, to the Museum of Natural History, New York. The shrine had lain at the cultural heart of the Mowachaht, whale hunters and fishermen who had lived at Friendly Cove for thousands of years. In the 1960s and '70s, all but one family left their ancient village--they moved to Vancouver Island, to a new site under the walls of a pulp mill. They suffered extremes of pollution, violence, alcohol.... Then, in the 1990s, in defiance of the agony of their history and to overcome the grief of the present, the Mowachaht and their neighbours, the Muchalaht, revived their songs and dances, revisited their shrine and rediscovered their pride.