Surviving Progress (Trailer)

In this feature documentary, Richard Desjardins and Robert Monderie continue in the same provocative vein as their earlier Forest Alert, this time turning their lens on Canada's mining industry. Using striking images, rare archival footage and interviews, The Hole Story analyzes company profits and the impact of mining on the environment and workers’ health.

This feature documentary zooms in on a Grade 6 class in Quebec where a teacher is implementing an experimental teaching method aimed at preparing children to take up environmental challenges. Over the course of a year, Dominique Leduc’s students will learn to identify, analyze and resolve a problem that exists in their world. They also learn about the uncertainty faced by those who want change.

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.

In this documentary, we hear directly from francophone soldiers serving in the Royal 22e Régiment (known in English as “Van Doos”) who were filmed in the field in March 2011, during their deployment to Afghanistan. They speak simply and directly about their work, whether on patrol or performing their duties at the base. The film's images and interviews bring home the complexity of the issues on the ground and shed light on the little-understood experiences of the men and women who served in Afghanistan.

This feature documentary by Sylvie Van Brabant introduces us to Mikael Rioux, a young Québécois activist who founded Échofête, Quebec’s first environmental festival. Spurred by his passionate concern for the world his son will inherit, Rioux goes on a global quest to meet 7 visionaries with concrete solutions to ecological problems. Together, they offer a survival guide for our planet and a journey back to hope.

This feature documentary exposes the little-known tragedy of girl soldiers in Uganda. How can they learn to live normal lives again after being abducted and trained to become killing machines? Clinging to their dreams, Grace, Milly and Lucy are trying to restore meaning to their lives and break the silence surrounding the fate of a sacrificed generation.

This animated film by Martine Chartrand (Black Soul) recounts the friendship between a young Félix Leclerc and Frank Randolph Macpherson, a Jamaican chemical engineer and university graduate who worked for a pulp and paper company. An inveterate jazz fan, Macpherson inspired Leclerc, who wrote a song about the log drives and entitled it “MacPherson” in honour of his friend. Paint-on-glass animation shot with a 35mm camera.

To mark the 75th season of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, conductor Kent Nagano put together a memorable program comprised of a selection of extraordinary works. This film captures the season’s high points, as well as Nagano’s knack for finding music and poetry in everyday urban life.

This documentary presents a few individuals for whom the Internet has become a way to connect with like-minded souls in surprising ways: a cyber punk based on an anti-aircraft rig in the English Channel who operates a rogue Web server, a monk developing "wireless prayer technology," a "gamer" who re-creates himself in an online game, a retired couple living in an Internet-controlled seniors' complex and a divorcée who exchanges vows online with a man she's never met.

Pipelines, Power and Democracy is a striking documentary that follows the mobilization of ordinary people to thwart the ambitions of oil companies and halt, even if only temporarily, the advance of pipelines across Quebec. In the process, the film offers a sharp reminder that power can be accessible to all.

A documentary portrait of ecologist Pierre Dansereau, the film takes us from Baffin Island to New York City, from the Gaspé Peninsula to Brazil. At each stop on this world tour, we hear his story and witness landscapes of breathtaking beauty.