Back to the Land

Cesar's Bark Canoe

January 1971 •French

"This documentary depicts a canoe being built in the traditional manner. Cesar Newashish, a 67-year-old Attikamek of the Manawan Reserve North of Montréal, uses only birchbark, cedar splints, spruce roots, and gum. With a sure hand he works methodically to fashion a craft unsurpassed in function or beauty of design. Building a canoe solely from the materials that the forest provides may become a lost art, even among the Native Peoples whose traditional craft it is. The film is free of spoken commentary but text appears on the screen in Cree, French, and English." - Anthology Film Archives

Little Burgundy

January 1968 •French

"This film is one of the first French Unit productions of the “Société Nouvelle/Challenge for Change” program. When an old area of Montréal is to be demolished to make way for a new low-income housing development, is there anything the residents can do to protect their own interests? The film documents such a situation in the Little Burgundy district of Montréal and shows how the residents organized themselves into a committee that successfully influenced the city’s housing policy." - Anthology Film Archives

Cinéma Vérité: Defining the Moment

June 2000 •English

A documentary about direct-cinema from its very beginnings (Nanook of the North) to the fake-direct-cinema of the Blair Witch Project. All the important direct-cinema filmmakers are portrayed and/or interviewed: Leacock, Wiseman, Maysles, Pennebaker, Reisz and others.

Friday: About Cars

January 1978 •English

"Montréal under the snow and the cold winter. It is the period of the year when the garage owners strike it rich. The automobile at the service of man? This small opus would rather show the contrary. This is one in a series of eight films titled “Chronicle of Everyday Life,” a project that filmmaker Jacques Leduc took four years to realize, and whose goal was to revisit Direct Cinema at a moment when it was already heavily “contaminated” by mainstream TV." - Anthology Film Archives

Belle famille

July 1978 •French

A working class family leaves St-Henri quarter in Montréal to build a new home in the countryside.

The Things I Cannot Change

January 1967 •English

"This feature documentary is considered to be the forerunner of the NFB's Challenge for Change Program. The film offers in inside look at 3 weeks in the life of the Bailey family. Trouble with the police, begging for stale bread, and the birth of another child are just some of the issues they face. Through it all, the father tries to explain his family's predicament. Although filmed in Montreal, the film offers an anatomy of poverty as it occurs throughout North America." - NFB

Michel Brault, l'instinct de vue

Invalid date •French

La meilleure façon, c'est par accident

Invalid date •French

Button Blanket

October 2009 •English

This short impressionist documentary looks at the creation of a Button Blanket by integrating the performance of a traditional dance with the art of the West Coast Heiltsuk Nation.

Red Hot Chili Peppers: Woodstock '99

July 1999 •English

Filmed live at Woodstock 99 Festival in Rome, New York, July 25, 1999.

Claudia Cardinale, la créature du secret

December 2019 •French

How a young and wild tomboy Tunisian girl became a great actress by accident. Claudia Cardinale : the fanciful destiny of a paradoxical movie star, who appeared in Federico Fellini's, Luchino Visconti's, Blake Edwards' and Sergio Leone's films.

Wilfred Buck

March 2024 •English

Moving between earth and stars, past and present, this hybrid feature documentary follows the extraordinary life of Wilfred Buck, a charismatic and irreverent Indigenous Elder who overcame a harrowing history of displacement, racism, and addiction by reclaiming ancestral star knowledge and ceremony.

Motherboard

August 2025 •English

Joys, sorrows and life's great tragicomedy in a video diary about motherhood and much more, recorded over nearly 20 years by award-winning British director Victoria Mapplebeck. A deeply personal and completely unsentimental film.

E.1027: Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea

October 2024 •French

A love triangle of jealousy in the Parisian art scene of the 1930s is brought to life in a stylish docufiction about iconic artist and architect Eileen Gray, who built her modernist dream house on the Riviera, only to be upstaged by Le Corbusier.

The Black Garden

March 2024 •French

Samvel and Avo, Erik and Karen live in the land of a century-old conflict, rooted in the rubble of the Russian Empire. In Nagorno-Karabakh, people live, dream and prepare for a tragedy that is always on the horizon. Over 3 years, Alexis Pazoumian films the epilogue of the black garden, a land where war waits for no one.

Our Father Wears a Sun

July 2024 •Danish

After actor Søren Spanning's stroke in 2014, his children document their family's adaptation over six years, navigating their evolving relationship and coping with grief until his death in 2020.

G – 21 Scenes from Gottsunda

March 2024 •Swedish

Loran, a filmmaker from the notorious suburb Gottsunda, grapples with the desire to move away but is torn by loyalty to his childhood friends who lead a criminal life. "G" marks Loran's farewell to Gottsunda but completing the film in a changed community tests his sense of belonging and identity.

Kristina Bitkulova: Who Cares

February 2024 •Russian

The second stand-up special of the rising comedy star Kristina Bitkulova. With the "What's the Difference" program, she visited eight countries, and the single itself was recorded in Kazakhstan. In her speech, Kristina talks about aerophobia and childhood injuries, and also tries to figure out how to keep your mind in emigration.

Za karpatským medvědem

January 1952 •Czech

Nebe patří nám

January 1953 •Czech

A documentary film about parachute training in the Voluntary Union of People's Aviation.