Available Light Film Festival 2024

An AP team of Ukrainian journalists trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol struggle to continue their work documenting atrocities of the Russian invasion.

A woman travels across Canada by hiking, biking, and paddling.

The remarkable story of Fa'amoana's time as a state ward in the 1960's and the intergenerational impacts of these experiences.

Every Sunday, Hudson goes back to visit his father in Parc-Extension. Along the way, he encounters Baki, his childhood friend. Together, they wander the streets of their neighborhood, just as they did during their youth. Feeling nostalgic, Hudson explains how the experiences he had in this area shaped his personality.

Can quilting change the world? Marilyn Farquhar is devastated when the RCMP killed her brother after a mental health crisis. So she creates a series of quilts to channel her grief, spark conversations and motivate change in policing.

Banchi Hanuse's doc takes us to the golden plains of Blackfoot Territory to the home of Logan Red Crow, a young Siksika woman whose passion is the Indian Relay. A sport for the truly brave, the Relay's bareback riders vault from horse to horse in short, exhilarating races. Gentle and reflective, yet unshakable in her determination, Logan is a champion in the making. Besides her skill and sheer grit, she has a loving family, an elite group of horses, and a home on her ancestral lands. Those are invaluable, but this rider will need more for victory. As Hanuse follows her through one competition after another, we see courage put to the test, and also get a picture of the other factors involved in the sport-including blind circumstance. Aitamaako'tamisskapi Natosi: Before the Sun offers the dual pleasures of serenity and suspense: we get leisurely, lyrical immersion in rural life as well as the thrill of rooting for victory. Logan's bond with her horses is palpable, and Hanuse shows us her tender interactions with them contrasted with gripping races. The animals are beautiful in their mute strength, and the director honours them with loving, graceful images. The connections explored here are profound and lasting: those between Father and Daughter, animal and human, family and community, ancestral tradition and contemporary life. Graceful, compelling and uplifting, this is an inspirational gem. It offers, through Logan, her horses, her family and her Nation, a portrait of radiant heroism.

When filmmaker Adrian Wills sets out to discover the story behind his adoption, his voyage reveals startling truths he could never have imagined, and shocking details he had tried to forget.

Part oral history and part visual poem, Miss Campbell: Inuk Teacher is the story of Evelyn Campbell, a trailblazer for an Inuit-led educational system in the small community of Rigolet, Labrador.

A novelist who's fed up with the establishment profiting from Black entertainment uses a pen name to write a book that propels him into the heart of the hypocrisy and madness he claims to disdain.

Chronicles Canada's long history of anti-Black racism through current interviews and archive material, with episodes focusing on police violence and the emergence of hip-hop music.

Kaatali, an Inuk woman seeking to cover up a tattoo that represents a difficult past, is thrown off when her tattoo artist turns out to be the now-grown child she used to babysit.

Activist Layla Staats shows the faces and personal stories behind the struggle of First Nations reserves to receive a basic human right: drinkable water.

A pair of rival butterflies form an unlikely friendship.

On a frozen highway in the remote Canadian North, an Indigenous woman and her dog are hunted by a stranger in a semi truck.

A teen girl is diagnosed with a reproductive condition that upends her plans to have a sex life, propelling her to explore unusual methods. Her relationships are challenged with everyone in her life, but most importantly, herself.

Between light and darkness stands Olfa, a Tunisian woman and the mother of four daughters. One day, her two older daughters disappear. Filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania invites professional actresses to fill in their absence.

A family of refugees from Syria, an English teacher from Afghanistan and a border guard all meet on the Polish-Belarusian border during the most recent humanitarian crisis in Belarus.

Twenty-five long years after his time in the limelight, former child actor Cody Lightning tries to revive his fortunes with a self-produced sequel to Smoke Signals (1998).

Three British teenage girls go on a rites-of-passage holiday - drinking, clubbing and hooking up, in what should be the best summer of their lives.

A young woman vampire is unable to kill to meet her need for blood, but may have found a solution in a young man with suicidal tendencies.

Ducarmel is an anachronistic firefighter, a quotidian poet, and an expert soup-maker. And sometimes, he's the best basketball player of all time.

Just out of jail, crumpled English archaeologist Arthur reconnects with his wayward crew of accomplices - a happy-go-lucky collective of grave-robbers who survive by looting Etruscan tombs and fencing the ancient treasures they dig up.

In 1959, at just nineteen years of age, Harry Jerome was Canada's most promising track and field star, and was on his way to the Olympics in Rome. By 1962, after suffering a gruesome leg injury, there was every reason to think that his racing days were over. But Jerome was not just a champion on the track; he was doubly determined off it. And so began his climb to what his coach, the legendary Bill Bowerman, called "the greatest comeback in track and field history." Through years of unparalleled political turbulence, personal challenge and racial conflict, Harry Jerome kept his head down and ran, displaying a strength of character and willful perseverance every bit as impressive as his record-setting athleticism. Filmmaker Charles Officer uses gorgeous monochrome imagery, impassioned interviews and astonishing archival footage to tell the runner's triumphant story, from his early days in North Vancouver, through his three Olympics and his unequalled streak of record-breaking, to his sudden and tragically premature death. Family, friends and teammates recall a man who forever changed the Canadian sports landscape and made an indelible mark upon the world. Compelling, surprising and urgently paced, Mighty Jerome will electrify sports fans, history buffs and all those with an appreciation for tales of courage and redemption.

A mother demands answers from her son's teacher when her son begins acting strangely.

A pediatric oncologist and her terminal teenage patient attempt to fit a lifetime of experiences into a single day.