Becoming 13

Early spring, 2022. Seventeen (or more) friends live through what they don't know will be a quick last few months of school, facing their final exams, closing activities, but more importantly the idea that they may never see each other again. Chapters I and II see the craziness mixed with the sense of possible loss of a friendship that surfaced quickly and may be fading all too soon.

Four precocious preteens perfect their lip-synching and runway walks in anticipation of the biggest drag performance of their lives at Montreal Pride, in this fierce and joyous celebration of acceptance and self-discovery.

In this modern, coming of age documentary, Naomi, Jojo and Arham grapple with economic divides, gender roles, and family dynamics while competing in the fastest growing high school sport in the country: girl’s wrestling.

A 16 year old girl recalls the last moments of her summer vacation, spent with friends in the Laurentians north of Montreal. She reminisces about their talks on life, death, love, and God. Shot in direct cinema style, working from a script that left room for the teenagers to improvise and express their own thoughts, the film sought to capture the immediacy of the youths presence their bodies, their language, their environment.

Peer behind the curtain as a cast of neurodivergent teens prepare to come of age and hit the stage in their school’s time-travelling, John Farnham–themed musical.

Ballet Boys takes you through disappointments, victories, forging of friendship, first loves, doubt, faith, growing apart from each other, finding your own way and own ambitions, all mixed with the beautiful expression of ballet.

A young man decides to join the army. He becomes the drummer in the military band, and his everyday life is now a combination of military training and music. What does the Argentine Army do these days, more than thirty years after the dictatorship? What does it mean to be a soldier in a country without wars?

Jamila is nine, Rachel eleven and Faseeha twelve when they take their first steps into a new hip-hop culture. The Berlin girls meet at a rap project, become friends and take off with their Sisterqueens crew. This documentary follows them over four years through their daily life with parents, siblings and their unusual chosen hip-hop family, where they learn a lot about hook lines and even more about self-respect.

A release that features 7 shorts from Italy, Israel, Tunisia, New Zealand, the United States and France, exploring those furtive first steps that men take as they decide to act on their sexuality. The 7 short films are: The First Time [La prima volta] (2012); Kiss Me (2022); Nidhal [نضال] (2022); Sparrow (2016); I Am Mackenzie (2019); The Place Between Us [Il posto fra di noi] (2010); By the End of the Night [Que la nuit s'achève] (2018).

A film about the close relationship between two brothers. Markus (10) and Lukas (7) live in an old, yellow townhouse in the middle of Oslo. The river runs close to their home. A paradise in the heart of a big city. Here the brothers grow up with their dreams and longings for the future.

As her adolescence gives way to the obligations of motherhood, troubled Gemma matures in Motherwell, her Scottish hometown, heavily dependent on the steel industry. Unfortunately for her, her hedonistic way of understanding the world does not fit in with the philosophy of the rest of the villagers, so trouble soon follows.