Family Diversity and Challenges (87)

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  5′2″ 80 000 LBS

  Nathalie Trépanier 1999 51 min

  This feature documentary shines a light on a group of women who are passionate about their non-traditional job – trucking. Filmed in 1999, it follows the women all across Quebec as they do their job and address the big-ticket items in life: love, family, freedom, and solitude. Filled with humour and the contagious good spirits of the women involved.
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  At Home with Mrs. Hen

  Tali 2006 7 min

  This animated short is a comical tale that pokes fun at motherhood. It depicts the temper tantrums of a child and the efforts a mother makes to set her son on the right path. You don’t need to be a chicken to relate.
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  Au Chic Resto Pop

  Tahani Rached 1991 1 h 24 min

  This feature-length film about poverty in Montreal is set against a soundtrack that includes rap, blues, rock, and country and western music. The film deals with the universal themes of hunger, hope and love and is named after an actual Montreal restaurant that's been serving those in need for over 25 years. In French with English subtitles.
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  Acting Blind

  Martin Duckworth 2006 52 min

  This touching documentary follows a cast of blind and visually impaired actors as they prepare Dancing to Beethoven, a play about blindness. The film takes us deep into the lives of the actors. We hear stories of their shock and disbelief at first losing sight and of their struggles coping with a life without it. We hear them talk about grieving and pining for the visual world. They tell the moving story of how this play is itself a victory, a type of salvation, for each of them. By opening night, at the renowned Place des Arts in Montreal, they are a close-knit cast, well-honed and ready to step out of the wings and into the light.
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  Absences

  Carole Laganière 2013 1 h 14 min

  The film was inspired by Laganière’s own personal story, of the inevitable estrangement of her mother, whose memory is slowly being consumed by Alzheimer’s disease. This “anticipated separation” serves as a bridge to the film’s other subjects as they pursue their own personal quests: Ines, an immigrant who returns to her country of birth, Croatia, to find the mother who abandoned her; Deni, an American author who is finally able to search for his Quebec roots; and Nathalie, who is desperately looking for her missing sister. Through their stories, Absences explores the deepest regions of the psyche, where our sense of loss and resiliency co-exist.
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  Alanna

  Julie Plourde 2009 25 min

  Taken in by a loving family at the age of eight weeks, Alanna grew up in the majestic wilderness of the Yukon mountains. Because her mother drank heavily during pregnancy, Alanna’s development was seriously compromised. She has fetal alcohol syndrome. She will never be like other kids.
  
  Tackling the subject with sensitivity, Julie Plourde’s documentary speaks to the heart. Alanna is a wake-up call about a tragedy that’s largely underestimated by the public but of growing concern to health professionals around the world. In French with English subtitles.
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  Beautiful Lennard Island

  Beverly Shaffer 1977 23 min

  This short documentary introduces us to Lennard Island, a tiny island near Tofino, British Columbia, and the family of 4 who are its sole occupants. There we meet the lightkeeper’s son, Steven Thomas Holland, age 10, and his father, mother and brother. A gracious host and great fan of his island home, the boy takes us on a tour and dispels any ideas that living in isolation might be boring. This film is part of the Children of Canada series.
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  Blood and Water

  Rohan Fernando 2007 1 h 17 min

  When the 2004 tsunami hit the coast of Sri Lanka, 65-year-old Anton Ambrose's wife and daughter were killed. "In five minutes," he says, "I lost everything."
  
  A year later, Anton returns to Sri Lanka. With him is his nephew, award-winning filmmaker Rohan Fernando.
  
  A Tamil, Anton moved to California in the 1970s and became a very successful gynecologist. His daughter, Orlantha, made the opposite journey, returning to Sri Lanka where she ran a non-profit group that gave underprivileged children free violin lessons. Anton and his wife, Beulah, were visiting her when the tsunami hit.
  
  Blood and Water is the story of one man's search for meaning in the face of overwhelming loss, but it is also filled with improbable characters, unintentional comedy and situational ironies.
  
  To honour Orlantha's work, Anton is building a music centre and hosting a fundraising concert. Eccentric characters and oddball events immediately take centre stage. Exiled Iranian country singer Ann Claire is focused on media attention as much as on the concert. Shondale, an energetic African American computer analyst, is so moved by Orlantha's story that she drops everything to become the concert's chief organizer. The concert itself loses money, although - in a final irony - some of the underprivileged children it is designed to serve come from among the richest families in the country.
  
  Meanwhile, Anton tours his old neighbourhood, spends time with his daughter's closest friends and seeks out advice from the archbishop of Sri Lanka. ("That's life!" the archbishop says, when Anton describes his loss.)
  
  All this against the backdrop of Sri Lanka - a country coming apart as the decades-old civil war between Tamil Tigers and the government heats up.
  
  Ultimately, Blood and Water is a film about the coming to terms with loss. As Anton Ambrose seeks meaning in tragedy, he must re-evaluate all he has taken for granted. In so doing, he comes to understand his daughter better than he ever did when she was alive.
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  Between: Living in the Hyphen

  Anne Marie Nakagawa 2005 43 min

  Anne Marie Nakagawa's documentary examines what it means to have a background of mixed ancestries that cannot be easily categorized. By focusing on 7 Canadians who have one parent from a European background and one of a visible minority, she attempts to get at the root of what it means to be multi-ethnic in a world that wants each person to fit into a single category.
  
  Finding a satisfactory frame of reference in our 'multicultural utopia' turns out to be more complex than one might think. Between: Living in the Hyphen offers a provocative glimpse of what the future holds: a departure from hyphenated names towards a celebration of fluidity and being mixed.
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  Becoming Labrador

  Rohan Fernando ,  Tamara Segura , … 2018 1 h 10 min

  In the stark Labrador interior, a growing number of Filipino workers have recently landed in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, travelling halfway around the world for jobs they hope will offer their families new opportunities and a better life. Becoming Labrador follows a handful of those women and men as they make a place for themselves in Labrador while dealing with the unexpected costs of living far from their family.
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  Birth of a Family

  Tasha Hubbard 2017 1 h 19 min

  Betty Ann, Esther, Rosalie, and Ben were only four of the 20,000 Indigenous Canadian children taken from their families between 1955 and 1985, to be either adopted into white families or live in foster care. As the four siblings piece together their shared history, their connection deepens, and their family begins to take shape.
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  Because We Are Girls

  Baljit Sangra 2019 1 h 22 min

  A conservative Indo-Canadian family in small-town British Columbia must come to terms with a devastating secret: three sisters were sexually abused by an older relative beginning in their childhood years. After remaining silent for nearly two and a half decades, the sisters finally decide to come forward—not only to protect other young relatives, but to set an example for their daughters as well.
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  Birth of a Family (Educational Version)

  Tasha Hubbard 2017 45 min

  Three sisters and a brother, adopted as infants into separate families across North America, meet together for the first time in this deeply moving documentary by director Tasha Hubbard. Removed from their young Dene mother’s care as part of Canada’s infamous Sixties Scoop, Betty Ann, Esther, Rosalie and Ben were four of the 20,000 Indigenous children taken from their families between 1955 and 1985, to be either adopted into white families or to live in foster care. Now all in middle age, each has grown up in different circumstances, with different family cultures, different values and no shared memories. Birth of a Family follows them through the challenges, trepidations and joys of their first steps towards forming their family. Meeting all together for the first time, they spend a week in Banff, Alberta, sharing what they know about their mother and stories about their lives and the struggles they went through as foster kids and adoptees. As the four siblings piece together their shared history, their connection deepens, bringing laughter with it, and their family begins to take shape.
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  The Circus

  Nicolas Brault 2010 7 min

  In the vestibule of a hospital room, a young boy waits to see his dying mother. The clamor and spiralling movements of bodies around him intensify, forming a grotesque circus—a cacophonous circle that pushes the child back, depriving him of one final touch of his mother's hand. Using rotoscoped drawings suggestive of charcoal sketches, as well as 3D and object animation techniques, The Circus compels viewing with its unsettling realism. Colour is employed metaphorically to subtly express the promise and the memory of maternal affection. Nicolas Brault's highly personal film, suffused with poetic modesty, casts a poignantly sincere gaze on the heartbreak of a child facing the fearful, mysterious experience of his mother's death.
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  Courage

  Geoff Bowie 2011 52 min

  In Toronto, Izabel, Bebeth, Natasha, Benoît, Grace and Jean, members of Ontario’s “working poor” directly affected by the economic crisis, agree to take part in group sessions organized by filmmaker Geoff Bowie. They talk about having to work multiple jobs to get by, describe the stress generated by financial vulnerability, and courageously explain their strategies for getting out of their difficult situation. Touching, insightful and full of hope, Courage is a participatory social-issues film that emphasizes the importance of mutual aid and succeeds admirably in condemning the taboo of poverty.
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  A Child Unlike Any Other

  Anna Barczewska 2005 11 min

  In this short documentary about autism, director Anna Barczewska examines the complex challenge of raising autistic children. Through the voice of Jan's devoted mother and the comments of specialists, the film offers an introduction to this neurological disorder that reduces one’s ability to communicate with the outside world.
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  Deep Inside Clint Star

  Clint Alberta 1998 1 h 28 min

  Take a hilarious and bittersweet journey into the hearts and minds of some very ordinary, extraordinary young Canadians with this feature-length documentary. The filmmaker, assuming the role of Clint Star, seeks out his far-flung buddies, young Indigenous people like himself. They talk about sex and life, love and abuse, and 500 years of oppression—all with humour, grace and courage.
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  Distant Islands

  Bettina Maylone 1981 6 min

  This short animation uses appliqué and embroidered tapestries to recall a young girl's happy summers spent sailing with her family off the coast of British Columbia. Each tapestry, meticulously stitched by hand with brightly coloured yarns, evokes the memory of leisurely days at sea, drifting among the islands.
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  Four Feet Up

  Nance Ackerman 2009 46 min

  In this personal documentary, award-winning photographer and filmmaker Nance Ackerman invites us into the lives of a determined family for a profound experience of child poverty in one of the richest countries in the world. 20 years after the House of Commons promised to eliminate poverty among Canadian children, 8-year-old Isaiah is trying hard to grow up healthy, smart and well adjusted despite the odds stacked against him. Isaiah knows he's been categorized as "less fortunate," and his short life has seen more than his share of social workers, food banks and police interventions. His parents struggle to overcome a legacy of stereotypes, abuse and dysfunction. More than anything, they want Isaiah and his siblings to have access to opportunities they never had. Ackerman spent 2 years with Isaiah and his family. As her portrait of the family unfolds with the help of Isaiah's creative input, curiosity and zest for life, so do Ackerman's own feelings about the responsibilities of Canadians to raise all children as our best investment in the nation's future.
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  Family Album Number One

  Jim Verburg 2009 1 min

  In this animated short, a layered narrative exploring memory and family history is constructed using a collage of family photos, photocopies and personal audio recordings. The film explores the fragility of personal memory, and photos as physical tokens of that memory.
  
  Produced as part of the 5th edition of the NFB’s Hothouse apprenticeship.
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  Freaks of Nurture

  Alexandra Lemay 2018 6 min

  Freaks of Nurture is an animated short about a neurotic mother-daughter relationship inspired by the filmmaker’s own unorthodox upbringing with her single-parent mom, who is also a foster parent and dog breeder. Self-deprecating and bursting with energy, the film reveals that no matter how grown-up we think we are, we never quite stop craving the love and support of a parent.
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  Foster Child

  Gil Cardinal 1987 43 min

  An important figure in the history of Canadian Indigenous filmmaking, Gil Cardinal was born to a Métis mother but raised by a non-Indigenous foster family, and with this auto-biographical documentary he charts his efforts to find his biological mother and to understand why he was removed from her. Considered a milestone in documentary cinema, it addressed the country’s internal colonialism in a profoundly personal manner, winning a Special Jury Prize at Banff and multiple international awards. “Foster Child is one of the great docs to come out of Canada, and nobody but Gil could have made it,” says Jesse Wente, director of Canada’s Indigenous Screen Office. “Gil made it possible for us to think about putting our own stories on the screen, and that was something new and important.”
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  The Gift of Diabetes

  O. Brion Whitford  &  John Paskievich 2005 58 min

  This feature-length documentary explores the diabetes epidemic within Indigenous communities in Canada. Ojibway filmmaker Brion Whitford lives with the pain of advanced diabetes, but shunned traditional Indigenous medicine and healing practices. But as his health deteriorated, he had a change of heart. Join Brion as he connects with his culture, comes to grips with his own mortality, and tries to re-establish balance in his life.
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  Home Feeling: Struggle for a Community

  Jennifer Hodge  &  Roger McTair 1983 57 min

  This feature documentary takes us to the heart of the Jane-Finch "Corridor" in the early 1980s. Covering six square blocks in Toronto's North York, the area readily evokes images of vandalism, high-density subsidized housing, racial tension, despair and crime. By focusing on the lives of several of the residents, many of them black or members of other visible minorities, the film provides a powerful view of a community that, contrary to its popular image, is working towards a more positive future.
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  Henry Settles in Upper Canada

  Eva Szasz 1995 10 min

  After a long, hard ocean voyage across the Atlantic, twelve-year-old Henry and his mother arrive in Upper Canada. Uncle Ned meets them and takes them to rest up. Homesick, Henry takes a turn around the village and discovers what village life is like in a well-established farming community. He soon settles in and brings some good news to his mother.
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  Homesteading on the Prairies

  Eva Szasz 1995 11 min

  Set in Manitoba in the 1890s, the story traces an Ontario farm family as they move west in search of cheap land. They experience travel on the recently completed CPR, build a sod house, battle a prairie fire and celebrate their first harvest.
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  Heaven on Earth

  Deepa Mehta 2008 1 h 44 min

  In Heaven on Earth, acclaimed director Deepa Mehta highlights the isolation and disappointment faced by a family of Punjabi immigrants to Canada. When Chand leaves her family and community behind in India to marry a man she's never met in Brampton, Ontario, she finds herself at the mercy of his temper and her mother-in-law's controlling behaviour.
  
  After a magic root fails to transform her husband into a kind and loving man, Chand takes refuge in a familiar Indian folk tale featuring a King Cobra.
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  Hard Light

  Justin Simms 2012 54 min

  This feature film uses Michael Crummey’s seminal piece of Newfoundland literature to examine cultural change and modern relationships. As in Crummey’s collection of poems and stories, there is a decisive theme of the artist investigating his ancestors to discover himself. Filmmaker Justin Simms offers viewers a timely reflection on compassion, storytelling and identity.
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  Hardwood

  Hubert Davis 2004 29 min

  Hardwood is a personal journey by director Hubert Davis, the son of former Harlem Globetrotter Mel Davis, who explores how his father's decisions affected his life and those of his extended family. Elegantly structured into three chapters entitled "love," "recollection" and "redemption," Davis uses personal interviews, archival footage and home movies to delve into his father's past in the hope of finding a new direction for his own.
  At its core, Hardwood is about the power of redemption and the healing of the bonds between fathers and sons.
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  A House Divided: Caregiver Stress and Elder Abuse

  Lyn Wright 1988 35 min

  Through 4 moving portraits, this short documentary sheds light on the tragedy of caregiver stress and elder abuse. The abuse takes many forms, ranging from wilful neglect and financial exploitation to physical assault. The film portrays the emotional complexity of family relationships that can lead to abuse of the elderly, the anguish and isolation of its victims, and the need for community understanding and support.
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