Band of Exile

Toronto Jazz

May 1963 •English

Toronto is regarded as the third largest jazz centre in North America. This film features a cross-section of jazz bands of that city: the Lenny Breau Trio, the Don Thompson Quintet and the Alf Jones Quartet. Their styles show creative self-expression, hard work, and improvisation.

Golden Globe - Kanada - Der Osten

October 2013 •German

Black Ice

July 2023 •English

This incisive, urgent documentary examines the history of anti-Black racism in hockey, from the segregated leagues of the 19th century to today’s NHL, where Black athletes continue to struggle against bigotry.

F

December 2023 •Spanish

F, an 18-year-old boy, immerses himself in the world of the Drag Queen where he begins to build his identity despite family and social mandates, which impose on him to be afraid and ashamed of being who he is.

Aisha's Story

April 2025 •English

A Palestinian grain miller in a Jordanian refugee camp safeguards her culture and shares her people’s history through food prepared with love, longing, and sumud—the Palestinian spirit of steadfastness.

Escape from the World's Most Dangerous Place

April 2012 •English

Successful model Samira Hashi makes an emotional return to Somalia, one of the most dangerous places in the world and the place she was born. Civil war broke out in 1991, 10 days after Samira's birth, but two years later her family managed to flee the country and she grew up in the UK.Now, as Samira and the war both turn 21, she's going back for the first time to visit the people and places she left behind. The contrast with her safe and glamorous life in London could not be starker as she experiences firsthand the war's effect on a generation of young people growing up in conflict.

Top Rider

February 2024 •English

An in-depth look into the isolated sport of Motocross in the much more isolated island of Bermuda.

Merci Bocuse

October 2019 •English

A young and ambitious team of chefs face the life-changing challenges of competing in the world's most prestigious culinary competition.

Someone Like Me

April 2021 •English

After 11 strangers unite to help a gay youth escape life-threatening violence in Uganda, the unexpected pandemic and conflicting opinions over his best interests test the limits of their commitment and jeopardize his fresh start in Canada.

American Teen

July 2008 •English

A documentary on seniors at a high school in a small Indiana town and their various cliques.

Solace in the Dark

September 2011 •English

A retrospective documentary on 9/11 in connection with the 2001 Toronto International Film Festival.

Limits of Europe

April 2024 •Czech

A prominent Czech journalist Saša Uhlová leaves her family and joins “cheap labour force” in Western Europe. Undercover, she works at an asparagus farm in Germany, tries her hand as a maid at a hotel in Ireland and takes care of the elderly in France. She experiences first-hand the struggles of Eastern European low-wage workers whose sacrifice and hard work allow for the Western society’s comfort. What is the real price that Europe pays for exploiting its own citizens? How do the lives of economic migrants, who have been forced to leave their children and elderly parents, look like? And why are privileged Europeans looking the other way?

Chief Rabbi's Emergency Council

October 1947 •English

Poignant postwar appeal for Britain’s Jewry to support orphaned Jewish children rescued from Europe.

Deadlock

November 2024 •Arabic

Overlooking the sea, two young men contemplate what is beyond the horizon as their friends and family leave for the allure of a new life.

Golden Land

February 2022 •Finnish

When Finnish-Somalian Mustafe discovers his ancestors’ land in the horn of Africa is full of copper and gold, he decides to swap his family’s safe but boring life in the Nordics for Somaliland, a self-declared state in East Africa. As Mustafe struggles to lift the treasures from underground, his children embark on a bumpy journey to uncover where they really belong.

My Piece of The City

February 2018 •English

This feature documentary explores the revitalization of Regent Park through the youth who live there as they navigate the challenges of performing in the musical showcase called 'The Journey'.

An Oppressed People Is Always Right

May 1976 •Danish

In May 1974, the Israeli Air Force carried out an extermination operation against the Palestinian refugee camp Nabatiyeh. With this as a starting point, it is reviewed how the last 50 years of Zionist colonization of Palestine have partly led to the establishment of the state of Israel, partly to the expulsion of a people, the Palestinians, from their land. The film shows scenes of daily life in Palestinian refugee camps. We hear various of the inhabitants talk about their desire to return to their country, and we follow how the resistance movement works to free women from their traditional backward role. At the same time, the emergence of the armed resistance struggle is analysed, and the significance of the latest military technological developments for guerilla wars in the 3rd world is explained.

La banlieue, c’est le paradis

February 2025 •French

In the 1960s, the suburbs were meant to be modern havens for newcomers from rural France, Portugal, Spain, North Africa, and Africa, helping rebuild post-war France. Large housing complexes symbolized this ideal, offering comfort, heating, and electricity. But by the 1980s, disillusionment set in as economic crisis, unemployment, poverty, crime, racism, and police violence took hold. Mohamed Bouhafsi tells the story of a dream that didn’t last.

CATCH ME ON THE ICE

February 2025 •English

Ava Caputo, a freshman at Toronto Metropolitan University, left her home in Alberta to embark on her university journey as a female hockey athlete.

Remember Who's Emma

June 2009 •English

A documentary about Who's Emma, a collective of punks and anarchists that existed in Toronto's Kensington Market from 1996 to 2000.