From the most intimate spheres to the wide open spaces, this programme explores our physical connections to our environment and to each other.

Bison

Set on a rural Saskatchewan ranch during the annual branding season, Bison follows a young man who heads to the country for a guys’ weekend, but is profoundly unsettled after he makes a disturbing discovery. Kevan Funk’s follow-up to Yellowhead is a disquieting study of the continued colonization of the West.

CHAINREACTION

Two bodies are drawn together and apart, built up and broken down by the force of their movements. Dana Gingras’s wild dance film is a pop sensation of a different kind.

Liompa

"Almost everything disappeared. How did it happen?" a man wonders on his deathbed. Elizabeth Lazebnik’s patient, poetic and supremely controlled film sensitively addresses the terrible thought that our pasts, our accomplishments, our families, and friends can be effaced by encroaching sickness and impending death.

On Cement

An elderly woman looking for one more (or last) intimate encounter reaches out to young man trying, in a unique way, to break out of his loneliness. Robin Aubert achieves an observational detachment that lets his characters soar to surprising heights.

The Sands

A group of friends retreat to a cottage for a weekend in the woods, and tensions rise when the presence of a newcomer — the black, much younger boyfriend of one of the group — elicits unthinking acts of deprecation. Director Marie-Ève Juste courageously addresses issues of social performance and the politics of difference.

Take me

Working in a hospital with permanently disabled patients, a male nurse is asked to perform duties that challenge his personal morals. With sensitivity, honesty and remarkable performances, Take Me reveals the complex physicality of relationships and the challenges of forced intimacy between strangers