2012/Dans le cœur

Through family archives, drawings, animations and performances that draw on her long experience with illness, Brigitte Lacasse takes an incisive, critical look at the Quebec health care system.

A documentary that explores what it means to be a young person in Quebec after the dissolution of the Quebec sovereignty movement.

When the Chinese Communist Party backtracks on its promise of autonomy to Hong Kong, teenager Joshua Wong decides to save his city. Rallying thousands of kids to skip school and occupy the streets, Joshua becomes an unlikely leader in Hong Kong and one of China’s most notorious dissidents.

Since its adoption in June 1955 by the Congress movement, the Freedom Charter has been the key political document that acted as a beacon and source of inspiration in the liberation struggle against Apartheid. It was reputedly the main source that informed democratic South Africa’s liberal constitution and a constant reference point for the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and rival political parties that it spawned since 1994, all claiming the Freedom Charter’s legacy. Freedom Isn’t Free assesses the history and role of the charter, especially in relation to key political and socio-economic aspects of developments in South Africa up to the present period. It includes rare archival footage with interviews of a cross-section of outspoken influential South Africans.

After crossing 11 countries irregularly to seek asylum in Canada, Peggy, Simon and their three children are waiting for the hearing that will determine whether they get refugee status or not. Having fled political repression in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the family tries to rebuild a peaceful life in Montreal, in spite of the constant threat of deportation. Between ghosts from the past, hopes for the future, a complex legal maze and seemingly endless trial, the film delves into the struggle of the Nkunga Mbala family to remain in Canada. Offering unprecedented access to their hearing before the Immigration and Refugee Board, the film unveils the opaque process of claiming asylum in Canada.

Refuge(e) traces the incredible journey of two refugees, Alpha and Zeferino. Each fled violent threats to their lives in their home countries and presented themselves at the US border asking for political asylum, only to be incarcerated in a for-profit prison for months on end without having committed any crime. Thousands more like them can't tell their stories.

This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.

This feature-length documentary by Alanis Obomsawin examines the plight of Native people who come to Montreal searching for jobs and a better life. Often arriving without money, friends or jobs, a number of them quickly become part of the homeless population. Both dislocated from their traditional values and alienated from the rest of the population, they are torn between staying and returning home.

This short documentary visits the 3 Quebec border towns of Rock Island, Stanstead and Beebe, and the Vermont town of Derby Line to see how residents and officials cope with a civic life that is cut down the middle by an international boundary.