Films

Alan built a castle in rural Illinois with his late love. Facing life alone, he revisits their fantasy through musical re-enactments transporting him to the world they shared.

Adrianne & the Castle recounts the enchanting true-life love story of Alan St George, a visionary mascot-maker and artist who, alongside his beloved late wife Adrianne, crafted a fantastical sanctuary of dreams in Havencrest Castle. Through inventive and whimsical memory re-creations, we follow Alan’s journey through love and profound grief, in the service of a truly extraordinary life.

Where to watch

• CBC Gem (short TV version)

App developers lured a massive labour force by promising flexible hours with no offices or bosses, but with gig workers from Uber, Amazon, Lyft and more in front of the camera, the human cost of disruption runs deep.

Digital platforms are changing the way we live and work, and human labour is the central commodity. The film delves into the lives of invisible workers around the world to hear their side of the story.

Where to watch

• CBC Gem (Canada)
• Apple TV, Prime Video, Kanopy, Tubi, Roku, Fandango, YouTube (US)

Taking inspiration from the late cultural theorist Lauren Berlant’s influential work Cruel Optimism, a philosophical portrait of five women’s stories of survival and transformation on a global scale.

Illusions of Control follows five stories of people who have lived through a major crisis that provoked them to create surprising new communities.

The joys and struggles of five diverse people living in one Johannesburg neighbourhood.

A collaborative, cinema-direct documentary, Jeppe on a Friday was shot by a team of South African women directors over the course of one day.

A collaborative cinéma-vérité portrait of one Montreal neighbourhood over a single day.

An homage to the 1962 Hubert Aquin classic À Saint-Henri le cinq septembre.

Where to watch

• NFB

Moving between a local microcosm and the global oil crisis, H2Oil weaves together stories of people fighting at the front lines of Canada’s tar sands.