Waiting

This feature documentary is a biography of Dr. Norman Bethune, the Canadian doctor who served with the loyalists during the Spanish Civil War and with the North Chinese Army during the Sino-Japanese War. In Spain he pioneered the world's first mobile blood-transfusion service; in China his work behind battle lines to save the wounded has made him a legendary figure.

This short documentary profiles a 1949 meeting of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers in Guelph, Ontario. The IFAP plans to help solve the dire problem of world hunger—a problem sharpened by the birth of 55,000 more human beings, arriving "for breakfast," each day. Delegates emphasize the plight of the many nations who face starvation while others have a surplus of food. The conference challenges the world to succeed at implementing a proposed plan for the fair distribution of food.

Shot in cinema-vérité style, this feature doc immerses us in the sights and sounds of the world's largest field hospital, the International Committee of the Red Cross in Sudan. The ICRC allowed filmmakers David Christensen and Damien Lewis unprecedented access to the surgical hospital and local medical staff as they care for wounded Sudanese soldiers and women and children, all casualties of the civil war.

With no narrator and minimal explanation, War Hospital simply and powerfully captures the joy and sadness of life and death.

A feature documentary on Nigeria’s successful movie industry. The creative duo of Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal – the same team who made Discordia – profile the Lagos-based dream machine. Operating on low budgets and tight schedules, “Nollywood” specializes in a unique form of African B-movie that draws upon both traditional voodoo stories and contemporary urban themes.

This 1940s wartime newsreel shows the food shortage in Nazi-occupied countries that have been forced to hand over their farm produce to Germany, leaving their own populations hungry. Part of the Canada Carries On series.

Discover a unique coop program in which students from Mozambique are taught dentistry techniques in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan in this short film from 1987. For many of us, dental health programs are something we take for granted, but in some regions of the world, they're considered a luxury. With this program, the Mozambique students are taught the skills they need to take back to their communities.

Exploring the question of Armenian identity, My Son Shall Be Armenian follows filmmaker Hagop Goudsouzian, who travels with five Montreal men and women of Armenian descent to the land of his ancestors in search of survivors of the 1915 genocide. Through interviews with elders and the touching accounts of his fellow travellers, Goudsouzian has crafted a dignified and poignant film on the need to make peace with the past in order to turn toward the future. In French with English subtitles.

This full-length documentary tells the story of 2 Afghans who return to Afghanistan in search of their families after a 16-year exile. Like many Afghan children, Soorgul and Amir were sent to Tajikistan during the Soviet occupation of their country. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the civil wars that broke out on both sides of the border left the children stranded, unable to leave the country until Canada accepted them as refugees.

The Sweetest Embrace tells an intimate story set against one of the world's most harsh and yet beautiful landscapes, in a land where life has been shaped by war and hardship but where spirit remains resilient.

In this documentary, Paul Cowan delivers unprecedented access to the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping, and the determined and often desperate manoeuvres to avert another Rwandan disaster, this time in the Democratic Republic of Congo (the DRC). The film cuts back and forth between the United Nations headquarters in New York and events on the ground in the DRC. We are with the peacekeepers in the 'Crisis Room' as they balance the risk of loss of life on the ground with the enormous sums of money required from uncertain donor countries. We are with UN troops as the northeast Congo erupts and the future of the DRC, if not all of central Africa, hangs in the balance. As Secretary General Kofi Annan tells the General Assembly at the conclusion of The Peacekeepers: "History is a harsh judge. The world will not forgive us if we do nothing." Whether the world's peacekeeper did enough remains to be seen.

In a quest to rediscover the spiritual values of his own people, an African filmmaker from the Gourmantche tribe of Burkina Faso visits the Atikamekw of Northern Quebec. The resulting documentary is a dialogue between those who divine the future in the sand with those who use snow-encased sweat lodges to reconnect with the spiritual world.

This autobiographical documentary revisits the Mau Mau Rebellion of the 1950s. More than 50 years after the conflict, in which the director participated as a young British soldier stationed in Kenya for his national service, he confronts his past with audacity and unflinching self-inquiry.

Combining McWilliams' own photographic record of the times with original animation and archival imagery, A Time There Was crafts a thoughtful account of the Mau Mau Rebellion – one of the most contentious episodes in Britain’s imperial endgame.