My Winnipeg

For First Nations communities, the headdress bears significant meaning. It's a powerful symbol of hard-earned leadership and responsibility. As filmmaker JJ Neepin prepares to wear her grandfather's headdress for a photo shoot she reflects on lessons learned and the thoughtless ways in which the tradition has been misappropriated.

Winter. Somewhere between Tehran and Winnipeg. Negin and Nazgol find a sum of money frozen deep within the sidewalk ice and try to find a way to get it out. Massoud leads a group of befuddled tourists upon an increasingly-strange walking tour of Winnipeg historic sites. Matthew leaves his job at the Québec government and embarks upon a mysterious journey to visit his estranged mother.

Bruce Macdonald follows punk bank Hard Core Logo on a harrowing last-gasp reunion tour throughout Western Canada. As magnetic lead-singer Joe Dick holds the whole magilla together through sheer force of will, all the tensions and pitfalls of life on the road come bubbling to the surface.

This film deals straightforwardly with the consequences of a nuclear attack for the Canadian Prairies. The Prairies are singled out because of their proximity to huge stockpiles of intercontinental ballistic missiles located in North Dakota. Scenes include a visit to a missile base and to an emergency government bunker in Manitoba. A doctor, a farmer and a civil defence coordinator provide different perspectives on nuclear war. Although the film focuses on one region, it provides a model for people everywhere who would like to know more about their own situation but don't know what questions to ask.

A self-narrated portrait of a Polish immigrant in Winnipeg whose unglamorous job keeping streetcar switches working reveals dignity, resilience, and pride in everyday labor.

In Depression-era Winnipeg, a legless beer baroness hosts a contest for the saddest music in the world, offering a grand prize of $25,000.

Winnipeg Film Group. Deep in the winter of 1986. Guy Maddin is in the process of filming Tales from the Gimli Hospital and needs to rub a dead seagull on somebody's chest. Immediately, Dave Barber agrees, submitting his bare flesh to Maddin's road kill and to film history. (This film was commissioned by the Winnipeg Film Group's Cinematheque for its 25th anniversary, Silverscope)

In post-World War I Winnipeg, a Ukrainian immigrant and a Jewish woman get caught up in a labour strike.

Two men driving home from work miraculously hit every green light.

This documentary explores a variety of projects undertaken by scientists at Environment Canada's Freshwater Institute in Winnipeg to study the processes that pollute or disrupt clean and balanced freshwater environments.

Follow Ruby Chopstix, Canada’s first drag artist-in-residence, as they navigate the complexity of being an underrepresented drag performer while creating a special showcase to create space for other queer BIPOC performers.

From challah to immigration to the wandering Jew, Ma Nishma Manitoba is a mid-length documentary that explores Manitoban Jewish stories of identity and history. Filmmakers Johanna and Sara put their own experiences in local context by chatting with several Jewish Manitobans, including a rabbi, politician, artist, Israeli immigrant, and others. Archival materials, illustrations, and stop animations connect history with present-day opinions and stories, as Sara and Johanna explore what being Jewish in Manitoba means to them and others.

Sandy Doyle is an outspoken no nonsense business woman. She became a worldwide celebrity with the creation of her diner Blondies Burgers.

A few days before she retires, devoted Winnipeg school principal Denise has spent her entire life taking care of everyone else. She is the glue holding together a crumbling ecosystem of neediness: a well-meaning but chronically disappointing husband, a school full of little crises, a self-absorbed daughter and unruly grandkids who treat her like a built-in safety net, and an aging father whose enthusiastic nudism keeps getting him expelled from one seniors’ home after another. When one indignity too many pushes her past her breaking point, Denise makes a radical decision.

An idyllic childhood with her mooshum and kookum, or grandparents, in her community of Peguis First Nation dissipates as Aberdeen’s hard-partying and absentee parents distances her from that haven. Now an adult, sleeping on public benches, Winnipeg-based Aberdeen is in survival mode. The last remaining stable parts of her life begin slipping away — her reliable brother Boyd is ill and gives up Aberdeen’s grandkids to the foster care system. Then she loses her ID.

When he takes his girlfriend to a seedy abortion clinic in the back room of a combination hair salon / bordello, Guy Maddin meets the madam’s daughter and falls in love. But she won’t let any man touch her until her father’s murder has been avenged.