Showcase of the best FILMS in the world today.
Audience Award Winners:
Best Feature Film: HIS NAME IS RAY
Best Short Film: EAT A SWEDE
Best Direction: ÎINHA
Best Cinematography: CUIDANTSIQMI: Love and Care for the Land
Best Sound & Music: FLYING IN THE DARK
Watch the Audience Feedback Video for each film:
HIS NAME IS RAY, 83min., USA
Directed by Michael Del Monte
In his anticipated follow-up to “Transformer”, which took home the Audience Award for Best Documentary at Hot Docs 2018, acclaimed director Michael Del Monte gives a human face to our growing homelessness and opioid crises. Ray once had everything. A job that he loved with the Coast Guard. The father to a family. But his heroin addiction took it all away. Now, the former sailor lives on the streets of Toronto with an entire population that seems to have just fallen through the cracks. With a remarkably compassionate and intimate lens, Del Monte follows Ray on his precarious journey to get off the streets and back on the water, where—in the ultimate achievement of the oblivion he craves—he could just sail away from it all.
WATCH HERE – The audience feedback video of the film!
CLICK HERE and see full info and more pics of the film!
EAT A SWEDE, 19min., Sweden
Directed by Daniel Hallberg
Would you eat human for humanity? By 2050, the global population will be 10 billion. How can we produce food without wrecking the planet? The aim of the campaign was to highlight this question, and Sweden’s answer. In the film Eat a Swede, viewers follow Erik Karlsson, a Swedish scientist with a controversial business idea: to produce and sell lab-grown human meat to feed our planet. But you know what, why eat a Swede, when you can eat Swedish!
WATCH HERE – The audience feedback video of the film!
CLICK HERE and see full info and more pics of the film!
ANGYIL, 4min., USA
Directed by Fanny Texier
Red Bull dancer Angyil McNeal meditates on her difficult childhood growing up in the hoods of Kansas City, and how she uses spirituality and dance as tools to understand life.
WATCH HERE – The audience feedback video of the film!
CLICK HERE and see full info and more pics of the film!
Îinha, 13min., UK
Directed by Jessie Knierim
For Jason Reed, salmon are synonymous with life. He has grown up on the banks of California’s Klamath River where the Karuk Tribe have depended on these salmon since time immemorial. But in recent years, nearly all the salmon have stopped returning to the river to spawn. To save the salmon and his cultural identity, Jason is turning to natural inspiration – the beaver. Historically, the pools created by beaver dams have provided lifesaving refuge to salmon before they venture out to the ocean. But beavers have been wiped out by hunting and due to California law, the Karuk people are forbidden from reintroducing beavers to their land. So Jason and his colleagues are working on a plan to save the salmon and attract beaver back to the area – they’re building dams themselves. If he succeeds, Jason will not only save the fate of the salmon, but the fate of his tribe.
WATCH HERE – The audience feedback video of the film!
CLICK HERE and see full info and more pics of the film!
CUIDANTSIQMI: Love and Care for the Land, 18min., Peru
Directed by Teo Belton
The Wari Indigenous people of the Llupa community, located below the Cordillera Blanca of the Peruvian Andes, are facing an environmental disaster that is directly affecting their physical and mental health.
WATCH HERE – The audience feedback video of the film!
CLICK HERE and see full info and more pics of the film!
COLIN JONES: THE END OF PHOTOGRAPHY, 12min., UK
Directed by Francesco Caradonna
This revealing documentary short delves into the world of ballet dancer-turned-legendary photojournalist Colin Jones, and one of the most significant voices of post-war Britain, as the man himself takes us on a tour through some of his work.
WATCH HERE – The audience feedback video of the film!
CLICK HERE and see full info and more pics of the film!
AGAIN, 2min., France
Directed by Olivier La Combe
Quentin Robinot is a professional Ping Pong player. At only 25, and following multiple traumas, he had to have a hip prosthesis placed. Then comes the time for questioning: What happens when no one bets on you anymore?
WATCH HERE – The audience feedback video of the film!
CLICK HERE and see full info and more pics of the film!
FLYING IN THE DARK, 14min., USA
Directed by Annika Horne
An animated documentary featuring the stories of women in aviation, from World War II to the present.
WATCH HERE – The audience feedback video of the film!
CLICK HERE and see full info and more pics of the film!
Image of an American: Frederick Douglass & the Right to Vote, 18min., Documentary
Directed by Ann Hartley
Upon the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, many Americans thought that slavery had been abolished once and for all. Frederick Douglass, however, argued that “slavery is not abolished until the black man has the ballot.” His fight to secure the vote transformed not only the Constitution, but what it meant to be an American.
This film explores Frederick Douglass’ journey to ensure African-Americans have the right to through the creation of the Fifteenth Amendment.
WATCH HERE – The audience feedback video of the film!
CLICK HERE and see full info and more pics of the film!
Documentary Film Festival. Los Angeles & Toronto 