Song for Hope (2022)

The Tragically Hip - A National Celebration

When it was announced in May of 2016 that lead singer Gord Downie had been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, the band decided that they would do one final run of 15 dates across Canada. A National Celebration was the final show of the Tragically Hip's Man Machine Poem Tour recorded on August 20th, 2016 at the K-Rock Centre in their home town of Kingston Ontario. Originally aired live by CBC across all platforms, the concert was experienced by an estimated one-third of Canadians, among the biggest events in the country's broadcast history.

Life Itself

The surprising and entertaining life of renowned film critic and social commentator Roger Ebert (1942-2013): his early days as a freewheeling bachelor and Pulitzer Prize winner, his famously contentious partnership with Gene Siskel, his life-altering marriage, and his brave and transcendent battle with cancer.

Behind the Life of Chris Gaines

To promote the release of his album Garth Brooks in... The Life of Chris Gaines, Garth Brooks appeared as Chris Gaines in a television "mockumentary," a version of VH1's seminal cable classic Behind the Music, featuring a totally made-up tale that just may be the greatest rock n' roll documentary ever made. This piece of art has everything that makes the story of being a rockstar fucking cool. It has childhood trauma, record label trauma, death, disfigurement, a plane crash, a car crash, sex addiction, redemption, a house fire, random unexplained commentary from Billy Joel, and more sex addiction.

Englands heimliche Hymne - Land of Hope and Glory

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Jan Allan och trumpeten som försvann

For 35 years, Jan Allan played the same trumpet, a Bach bought in New York in 1965. And he had intended to play it until the very last note. But then Jan Allan's beloved trumpet was stolen, and what happened to his airy lyrical tone?

The Language of Our Dreams – The Conductor Teodor Currentzis

“The most important work doesn’t take place on stage, but everywhere else,” Teodor Currentzis is convinced. And that is precisely where this film portrait follows him. For eight months, German director Andreas Ammer accompanied the charismatic conductor. He observed him in rehearsals with the SWR Symphony Orchestra, which Currentzis leads as chief conductor since 2018. He has visited him at his former place of activity in Perm, where he led the opera house from 2011 to 2019 and launched his career through meticulous work with his ensemble musicAeterna. He accompanied Currentzis on guest performances and had numerous conversations with him. The result is a many-faceted portrait of the impressive musician, who sees his profession also as a spiritual mission.

Dancing in the rain

Self-portrait of a 38-year-old mother from Abitibi, struggling with breast cancer.

Young @ Heart

Documents the true story of the final weeks of rehearsal for the Young at Heart Chorus in Northampton, MA, and many of whom must overcome health adversities to participate. Their music goes against the stereotype of their age group. Although they have toured Europe and sang for royalty, this account focuses on preparing new songs for a concert in their hometown.

Holst: In the Bleak Midwinter

The great composer of The Planets, Gustav Holst also taught himself Sanskrit, lived in a street of brothels in Algiers, cycled into the Sahara Desert, and allied himself during the First World War with a ‘red priest' who pinned on the door of his church "prayers at noon for the victims of Imperial Aggression". He hated the words used to his most famous tune "I Vow to Thee My Country" because it was the opposite of what he believed, and died before the age of 60 - broken and disillusioned.

Cristina

An intimate journey of a 37-year-old Cristina, as fate brings to her life both a new love and an unbeatable challenge. Determined to pass on a message of hope and a 'live in the now' mentality, Cristina's second cancer takes a toll on her diminishing body, however her love for Bruce only grows. Bruce stands by her side while juggling work and financial strains. The film follows Cristina's journey into her deep AMOUR, one that supports and lifts her up. If she had to choose between finding this deep and pure love and having cancer, or being cancer free but never experiencing true love... what would she choose? Her shocking answers are captured by veteran filmmaker Michèle Ohayon on camera.

Breakthrough

Breakthrough tells the story of a renegade scientist’s quest to find a cure for cancer, the disease that killed his mother. Texan Jim Allison is a 2018 Nobel Prize winner for discovering how to prompt a cancer patient’s own immune system into defeating their disease, but for decades he waged an often-lonely struggle against the painful skepticism of the medical establishment.

Beethoven's Nine: Ode to Humanity

Can a work of art remain relevant 200 years after its creation? Ludwig van Beethoven’s last completed symphony proves it’s possible.

Manufacturing Ignorance

Tobacco, climate change, pesticides,... Never has scientific knowledge seemed so vast, detailed and shared. And yet it appears to be increasingly challenged. It is no longer surprising to see private corporations put strategies in place to confuse the public debate and paralyze political decision-making. Overwhelmed by excess of information, how can we, as citizens, sort out fact from fiction? One by one, this film dismantles the workings of this clever manoeuvre that aims to turn science against itself. Thanks to declassified archives, graphic animations and testimonies from experts, lobbyists and politicians, this investigation plunges us into the science of doubt. Along with a team of experts (philosophers, economists, cognitive scientists, political men, or even agnotologists), we explore concrete examples of doubt making and try to understand the whole process and the issues behind it.

One Fire One Mouth

J Fever, China’s greatest “rap poet”, reinvents the origin myth of fire, in an exquisite performance with Shanghai Philharmonic in Shanghai Concert Hall, featuring composer Soulspeak and Yehaiyahan.

Beethoven privat

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Samuel Barber: Absolute Beauty

Known for his mournful "Adagio for Strings," Samuel Barber was never quite fashionable. This acclaimed film is a probing exploration of his music and melancholia. Performance, oral history, musicology, and biography combine to explore the life and music of one of America’s greatest composers. Features Thomas Hampson, Leonard Slatkin, Marin Alsop and many more of the world's leading experts on Barber's music, with tributes from composers Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson and William Schuman. The film was broadcast on PBS, and screened at nine film festivals internationally, with three best-of awards. It was named a Recording of the Year 2017 by MusicWeb International.

Pavarotti, Birth of a Pop Star

Although he is unanimously credited with having democratised opera, making it accessible to the greatest number, focus is rarely put on the strategy he devised and implemented in order to carry out his actions, nor what his actions reveal of the man and artist, and of the resulting metamorphosis from opera singer to pop artist. Through this angle, this film sets out to pay tribute to the man who summed up his credo, obsession and life’s work, in the following way: “They led the public to believe that classical music belonged to a restricted elite. I was the way to prove to the world that was wrong.

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A documentary on one of the world’s most exciting string quartets – the Quatuor Ébène – draws viewers into the musicians’ struggle with interpretational details, with colleague-friends – and with themselves.

Jiří Bělohlávek: But I just love conducting so much

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Lindsey Stirling: Brave Enough

Beginning on the eve of her thirtieth birthday, “Brave Enough,” documents violinist Lindsey Stirling over the past year as she comes to terms with the most challenging & traumatic events of her life. Through her art, she seeks to share a message of hope and courage and yet she must ask herself the question, “Am I Brave Enough?” Capturing her personal obstacles and breakthrough moments during the “Brave Enough,” tour, the film presents an intimate look at this one-of- a-kind artist and her spectacular live performances inspired by real-life heartbreak, joy, and love.

Karajan: Portrait of a Maestro

An account of the life and work of controversial German orchestra conductor Herbert von Karajan (1908-89), celebrated as one of the greatest musicians of the twentieth century.

Chopin: The Space Concert

200 years after Chopin's birth, the Space Shuttle Endeavour, like a giant piano, took the music of Chopin into orbit.