Positions (2018)

Dead Man

On the run after committing murder, an accountant encounters a strange Native American man who prepares him for his journey into the spiritual world.

Once Were Warriors

A drama about a Maori family living in Auckland, New Zealand. Lee Tamahori tells the story of Beth Heke’s strong will to keep her family together during times of unemployment and abuse from her violent and alcoholic husband.

1492: Conquest of Paradise

1492: Conquest of Paradise depicts Christopher Columbus’ discovery of The New World and his effect on the indigenous people.

Skinny Love

When Emilý, a twenty-five year old content creator, learns that her long-distance girlfriend wants to move to Iceland and make their open relationship exclusive, she must face her anxieties about the future. All the while trying to support her teenaged co-worker and battle financial difficulties.

Sakuran

Anna Tsuchiya blasts back in time playing an oiran, a top-notched geisha of the Edo period’s Yoshiwara District, navigating brothel politics while trying to cling to the man she loves.

Whore

This melodrama investigates the life of a sex worker, in a pseudo-documentary style.

Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe flees Britain on a ship after killing his friend over the love of Mary. A fierce ocean storm wrecks his ship and leaves him stranded by himself on an uncharted island. Left to fend for himself, Crusoe seeks out a tentative survival on the island, until he meets Friday, a tribesman whom he saves from being sacrificed. Initially, Crusoe is thrilled to finally have a friend, but he has to defend himself against the tribe who uses the island to sacrifice tribesman to their gods. During time their relationship changes from master-slave to a mutual respected friendship despite their difference in culture and religion.

No Māori Allowed

When an academic unearths a forgotten history, residents of the small township of Pukekohe, including kaumātua who have never told their personal stories before, confront its deep and dark racist past.

Rez Ball

After losing their star player, a high school basketball team rooted in Native American culture must unite to keep their state championship dreams alive.

Eternal Ashes

ETERNAL ASHES tells the story of a mother, Ana and her daughter, Elena. Although they are separated, in the space and time they remain united forever. The people and the millenarian culture of Yanomami are the framework of this story about the unbreakable bonds of filiations. After an accident in the furious flow of the mythical Orinoco River, in the fifties, Ana was considered dead. Elena as an adult and facing the negligible possibility that her mother is alive decides to leave to the Amazon to search her. ETERNAL ASHES is a story of filiations, poetry, wisdom and especially of humanity.

On the Doll

A lurid, dark look into the lives of sex workers, where victims of child abuse deal with the consequences later in life.

That Which Once Was

In 2032 an eight-year old boy, displaced by global warming, fends for himself as an environmental refugee in a hostile northern metropolis. Haunted by memories of flooding that left him homeless and orphaned, the boy forms an unexpected friendship with an Inuk ice carver who helps him confront his past.

Miro

When Miro returns home at the end of World War II he finds his land taken, his people gone, his daughter stolen and his service record treated with contempt. But the battlefield has taught him how to fight and he sets out to reunite his family waging his own form of justice.

El Norte

Brother and sister Enrique and Rosa flee persecution at home in Guatemala and journey north, through Mexico and on to the United States, with the dream of starting a new life.

Rustic Oracle

Set in the late 90s, Rustic Oracle is a dramatic feature about Ivy, an 8-year-old girl trying to understand what happened to her big sister who has vanished from their small Mohawk community. With minimal clues, Ivy and her mother Susan embark on an unwelcome journey to find Heather which will ultimately bring the pair closer together despite challenging circumstances. Behind the story of desperation, told through the eyes of a child, lies one of hope, growth, awakening and love.

The Fallacy

The current trend to render prostitution a profession "as any other" is belied by women who were themselves prostitutes. With clarity and courage, the women in this film reveal the hidden face of that so-called "sex work". They are 22, 34 or 48 years old; they live in Montreal, Quebec and Ottawa - They have recently given up prostitution, or are trying to escape it. These women are leading the bitter fight to turn their lives around and it is a long and lonely struggle fraught with difficulties. Shot in a Cinéma Vérité style, The Fallacy (L'imposture) takes us to the heart of their realities.

Man's Job

Juha is 38 years old and has three small children and a depressed wife. He sees himself as strong and believes a man should provide for his family. But one day Juha is fired from his job. Ashamed, he weaves a web of lies to hide the fact from his family. With the help of his friend Olli, Juha begins prostituting himself to support his wife and children. With this he makes in two hours what it took him two days to earn before. The shame and deception mushroom, but the pay from the new profession seems to offset the downside.

Cold Journey

In this feature drama, a Canadian Indigenous youth attempts to find a place for himself. He faces culture shock as the educational system teaches him to be a white man and tries to find a way of life more meaningful to his Indigenous culture and ancestry.

Portrait of a Certain Orient

At the end of the 1940s, Lebanon is sliding towards a devastating conflict. Catholic siblings Emilie and Emir decide to leave for Brazil. Aboard the ship to their new home, Emilie falls in love with Omar, a Muslim merchant. For an enraged and jealous Emir, the relationship is intolerable. As the story unfolds against the backdrop of the majestic rainforest, Emir’s actions and the choice that Emilie subsequently makes lead to disastrous consequences.

When Shadows Dance at Night

Following her brother's death, Georgia, a young college student, returns home to her reservation only to find she's become the prey of a shapeshifting, faceless figure.

Blood Lines

Whilst embarking on a lesbian relationship with the new girl in town, a Métis woman’s life is rocked to the core when her estranged mother returns.

Naked Island - Hipster Headdress

An unapologetic confrontation of cultural appropriation and everything that’s wrong with hipsters in headdresses.

Jeff

A phone sex operator loses her grip on reality, caught in a hypnotic relationship with a caller making disturbing confessions.

Edge of the Knife

Island of Haida Gwaii, northern Canada, 19th century. During a fishing gathering, Adiits'ii commits an unfortunate act. Tormented, he runs away to the wilderness as his mind embraces madness.

Joy

Close to paying off her debts, a Nigerian sex worker in Austria coaches a reluctant novice, and assesses the risks of taking a faster path to freedom.

Baby

After being released from a juvenile detention center, Wellington finds himself alone and adrift on the streets of São Paulo, without any contact from his parents and lacking the resources to rebuild his life. During a visit to a porn theater, he encounters Ronaldo, a mature man, who teaches him new ways of surviving. Gradually, their relationship turns into a conflicting passion, oscillating between exploitation and protection, jealousy and complicity.

Embrace of the Serpent

The epic story of the first contact, encounter, approach, betrayal and, eventually, life-transcending friendship, between Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman, last survivor of his people, and two scientists that, over the course of 40 years, travel through the Amazon in search of a sacred plant that can heal them. Inspired by the journals of the first explorers of the Colombian Amazon, Theodor Koch-Grunberg and Richard Evans Schultes.

Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1

In 1859, families discover the lure of the Old West as they settle in territories from Wyoming to Kansas. Meanwhile, a gruff cowboy finds himself on the run with a prostitute and a young boy after killing a fellow gunman.

Streets of Glória

Gabriel, a 24-year-old anthropologist from a wealthy family from the interior of the Northeast, is gay and in the closet. Following the death of his grandmother, he decides to go to Rio de Janeiro to study the lives of sex workers. Seduced by his object of study, Gabriel will become one of them.

Dance Me Outside

Explores the sensitive, and tense, relationship between life on an First Nations reservation and life in the outside world. When Native Canadian Silas Crow is forced to write a personal essay in order to get a much-desired job, he tells the story of the rape and murder of an Indian girl by a drunken thug. When the killer received a lenient two-year sentence for manslaughter, the First Nations community felt shock and anger—and tried desperately to deal with the after-effects of this lack of justice.

Ainu Mosir

Kanto, 14, a descendant of Japan's indigenous Ainu people, decides to visit a hole in the forest — a path to the other side of the world where dead people live, hoping to see his deceased father.

The Boy

Haunted by the fear of becoming a "one-hit-wonder author," João grows increasingly anguished over his inability to produce a follow-up to his acclaimed debut novel. The young writer realizes he must break free from his self-imposed routine and venture beyond his comfort zone. In this pursuit, he forms an unlikely friendship with Breno, a free-spirited motorcyclist whose lifestyle couldn’t more different from João’s own. Their bond may just hold the key to unlocking the inspiration João needs to finally write his second book—and redefine his legacy.

Outcast of the Islands

After financial improprieties are discovered at the Eastern trading company where he works, Peter Willems flees the resulting disgrace and criminal charges. He persuades the man who gave him his start in life, the merchant ship captain Lingard, to bring him to a trading post on a remote Indonesian island where he can hide out.

A Courtesan with Flowered Skin

Japan around 1860: popular courtesan Asagiri will be freed soon from her service, yet she cannot imagine any other existence. Until one day at a local festival, Asagiri meets the young artisan Hanjiro by chance – an encounter that changes her destiny. With a strong performance by leading actress Yumi ADACHI and exquisite camerawork and production design, A COURTESAN WITH FLOWERED SKIN succeeds in recalling the golden age of Japanese erotic film.

Le Dep

A a psychological drama about Lydia, a young Innu woman who works at her father’s convenience store in a small First Nations community in rural Quebec. One night, as she prepares to close up shop, a masked robber enters the store and holds her at gunpoint. This traumatic experience becomes even more troubling when Lydia recognizes her assailant. Before long, she will have to make a decision that will forever change the course of her life.

Tokyo Stray Girls

A timid young woman who lives with her domineering mother accepts an Adult Video scout's offer to "become somebody else" by performing in porn videos. As she rises in popularity, the boundaries between her two lives begin to disintegrate.

Katshinau

In New France before the British Conquest, Marie, an indigenous slave, serves the local surgeon. Her daily life of household chores is bleak and alienating. The encounter with a young girl she presumes to be her child will give her motivation to undertake radical actions.

The Invisible Nation

The Algonquin once lived in harmony with the vast territory they occupied. This balance was upset when the Europeans arrived in the 16th century. Gradually, their Aboriginal traditions were undermined and their natural resources plundered. Today, barely 9,000 Algonquin are left. They live in about 10 communities, often enduring abject poverty and human rights abuses. These Aboriginal people are suffering the threat to their very existence in silence. Richard Desjardins and Robert Monderie have decided to sound the alarm before it's too late.