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One of my most vivid memories remains sitting on the floor of school bathrooms calmly guiding my friend through her first use of a tampon, it is something we were ‘taught’ with the use of vintage videos, unclear and useless medical demonstrations and quite frankly outdated suggestions from unsympathetic adults. Christa Haley’s Swim Captain affectingly highlights this universal aspect of womanhood with tenderness and clear cinematic vision. Upon digesting the NYU Graduate Film production restrictions and reflecting on her own very intimate and heartfelt struggles with being a young woman, Haley submerges us into a painful but empowering story of ultimately overcoming insecurity. Swim Captain is unexpectedly visually arresting considering its austere confined setting but Haley’s use of the space and adaptation of the location, combined with considered symbolic colours and cinematography takes it far beyond its locker room locale. Making its online premiere on the pages of Directors Notes,...

The Canadian Screen Awards has unveiled nominations for the national film and TV prize-giving, and the CBC civil rights drama The Porter leads the film and TV field with 19 mentions in all, including for best small-screen drama.

The first Canadian drama series from an all-Black creative team, which also streams on BET+, centers on the lives of Black train porters and their families as they launch North America’s first Black labor union in the 1920s.

The TV categories, voted on by around 3,000 Canadian industry insiders, also sees the CBC series Detention Adventure and Sort Of – a Peabody award-winning show about a gender fluid young Muslim in Toronto played by Bilal Baig — nab 15 nominations each in an awards show shaping up to be a major showcase for people of color.

That follows Canadian film, and TV industry efforts to ensure diversity and inclusivity in the country’s indie production sector and prize-giving process.

Measuring up against the likes of Sophie Dupuis‘ just released sophomore film (a Val-d’Or set dramatic thriller) Souterrain, it’s Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette‘s third feature (a Chicoutimi set coming-of-ager) La déesse des mouches à feu (a 2020 Berlin Film Festival winner) that claimed the top prize at this year’s Gala Québec Cinéma aka Prix Iris Awards. Barbeau-Lavalette’s won Best Film, Best Director, Best Supporting Actress (Caroline Néron) and Newcomer of the Year (Kelly Depeault) and Best Editor Stéphane Lafleur (Tu dors Nicole helmer).

Souterrain did nab Dupuis the Best Screenplay award, Best Sound, and a much deserving best Supporting Actor for Théodore Pellerin.…...

The 70th edition of the Berlin International Film Festival is now in the books. The jury, featuring Jeremy Irons, Bérénice Bejo, Bettina Brokemper, Annemarie Jacir, Kenneth Lonergan, Luca Marinelli, and Kleber Mendonça Filho, shared their award winners–and now here’s a look at what we admired the most during the festival.

Featuring a fair bit of cross-over, check out our favorites below and return for more coverage (including reviews and interviews). Also, be sure to follow us on Twitter for updates as these films get distribution and release dates.

Dau. Natasha

It is no use of hyperbole to suggest that Dau. Natasha already looks like one of the most provocative art films ever made. The first strictly theatrical feature to be released from Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s gargantuan, unprecedented Dau project (12 other films were shown at an immersive exhibition in Paris last year), it offers the viewer a kind of...

Die-hard grunge fan (and drug dealer) Fred (Noah Parker) tells Catherine (Kelly Depeault) she can’t play her Hole CD because Courtney Love killed Kurt Cobain. It’s a remark that was probably half joke and half memorial that leads into Keven (Robin L’Houmeau) dropping the necessary wisdom of knowing Love wouldn’t have been able to stop him if she tried. Cobain wasn’t a victim. He lived hard and walked a road of his own making to an end he ultimately embraced enough to pull the trigger. It’s the same type of lives these Québécois teens lead—mescaline, sex, rock-n-roll, and rage. So when Catherine replies with an “I don’t care” after being confronted about her fast-moving downward spiral, she isn’t being flippant. She truly doesn’t. She’s embraced the risks.

This is the reality many coming-of-age films forget. You need the complexity of...