Junction North International Documentary Film Festival

Junction North

INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL

Sudbury Downtown Indie Cinema Co-op is delighted to announce our 5th edition of Junction North International Documentary Film Festival, Thursday March 31st to Sunday April 3, in downtown Sudbury. This is possible due to the stellar support of our keen local audiences of doc-lovers, filmmakers, patrons, sponsors and government partners.

Junction North brings Northern Ontario non-stop screenings over 4 days of the year's outstanding stories from around the world.

All screenings will take place at Indie Cinema 162 Mackenzie Street, Sudbury - laneway entrance. Free parking.

FOR ADVANCE TICKETS and PASSES CLICK HERE

FESTIVAL SCREENING SCHEDULE CLICK HERE

OPENING FEATURE

Northern Ontario Premiere

MAU

by Benjamin Bergmann, Jono Bergmann

Thursday March 31 at 6:30pm

2022  Documentary USA  1hr 18 min

MAU is the first, feature-length documentary about the design visionary Bruce Mau. The film explores his unlikely creative journey and ever-optimistic push to tackle the world's biggest problems with design. Over the span of his career, this creative dark horse has completed the transformation from world-class graphic designer to designer of the world. From advising global brands like Coca Cola and Disney, to rethinking a 1000-year plan for Mecca, Islam's holiest site. From working with the greatest living architects (Rem Koolhaas & Frank Gehry) on books and museums to rebranding nations such as Guatemala and Denmark. Bruce Mau is a pioneer of transformation design and the belief that design can be used to create positive change in our world.

Northern Ontario Premiere

WHO WE ARE
A Chronicle of Racism in America

by Emily Kunstler & Sarah Kunstler

Thursday March 31 at 8:30pm

Winner Best Picture and Best Independent Film - African-American Film Critics Association (AAFCA)
2021  Documentary USA   117 min

The most important film about race since Ava DuVernay’s 13th and Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro, Who We Are is an eloquent, passionate and revelatory reclamation of the history America sweeps under the carpet. Interweaving lecture, personal anecdotes, interviews, and shocking revelations, in WHO WE ARE — A Chronicle of Racism in America, criminal defense/civil rights lawyer Jeffery Robinson draws a stark timeline of anti-Black racism in the United States, from slavery to the modern myth of a post-racial America.

Northern Ontario Premiere

THE AUTOMAT

by Lisa Hurwitz

Friday April 1 at 12 noon

2021  Documentary USA   79 min

The cast of luminaries that first-time filmmaker Lisa Hurwitz assembles in documentary The Automat have one thing in common – extreme adoration for the famed Horn & Hardart eateries, whose soaring ceilings, famed coffee and wholesome vending-machine meals for a nickel dominated the food scene in Philadelphia and NYC through much of last century.

Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Elliot Gould, Colin Powell, Starbucks founder Howard Shultz and the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg get kind of emotional recalling the thrill of putting a coin in a slot, opening a glass window and pulling out Salisbury steak, macaroni and cheese, creamed spinach. And dessert.

Northern Ontario Premiere

100UP

by Heddy Honigmann

Friday April 1 at 2pm

2020  Documentary Netherlands, Norway, Belgium  93 min

100UP is a film which investigates the will to live. It portrays a colourful selection of 100+ year old people from all over the world. They have lived for over a century and witnessed great historical events, but instead of dwelling on the past, they look ahead. With the clock inevitably ticking, these centenarians cling to life, set new goals with a joie de vivre, refusing to admit the betrayal of their deteriorating bodies. Time is both their enemy and their friend. They have overcome diseases, lost partners and often survived their own children. Nevertheless, these active, curious and creative 100+ year olds are amazingly good at restarting every new day.

Northern Ontario Premiere

CRUTCH

by Chandler Evans, Sachi Cunningham

Friday April 1 at 4pm

2020  Documentary USA  98 min

CRUTCH documents Bill Shannon's extraordinary journey: the history of his medical odyssey and his struggles with chronic pain, the evolution of his crutch dancing and skating, his rise to become a world-renowned performance artist, and his transformation from an angry skate punk to an international hero. CRUTCH dives into Bill’s provocative street performances, in which he exposes the hidden world of assumptions disabled people encounter in public, on a daily basis. While the film questions his early exploitation of strangers’ good Samaritan impulses, it also marvels at Bill’s ability to create solutions and empower others to navigate similar challenges. From childhood “cripple” to international provocateur, CRUTCH is an emotional story of a one-of-a-kind artist’s struggle to be understood.

EVENING FEATURE

Northern Ontario Premiere

THE LAST OF THE RIGHT WHALES

by Nadine Pequeneza

Friday April 1 at 6:30pm

2021  Documentary Canada  1hr 32 min

From the only known calving grounds to the shifting feeding grounds, Last of the Right Whales follows the North Atlantic right whale migration and the people committed to saving a species still struggling to recover from centuries of hunting. Now climate change is forcing right whales further north in search of food, putting them on a collision course with deadly ships and fishing gear.

With unprecedented access to film the whale migration, Last of the Right Whales brings a message of hope about the most at risk great whale on the planet.

Northern Ontario Premiere

PRESIDENT

by Camilla Nielsson

Friday April 1st at 8:30pm

2021   Documentary USA  2hr 14 min

Camilla Nielsson’s purposefully infuriating documentary, President, covers a 2018 presidential election in Zimbabwe that is so transparently fraudulent, one could easily imagine it being satirized on an episode of “Veep.” After 38 years of oppression under the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) regime, president Robert Mugabe is forcibly ousted from power in the military coup of November 2017. Yet this seeming move towards reform quickly proves to be a mere power play, as fellow ZANU-PF member Emmerson Mnangagwa plans to take his place in yet another rigged election. His charismatic opponent is Nelson Chamisa of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) Alliance, a 40-year-old lawyer who fought against President Mugabe’s regime when he was a student activist, resulting in him getting beaten with a metal pipe that fractured his skull.

DECOLONIZING THE LENS

With local filmmaker, Darlene Naponse

Saturday April 2 at 2:15pm

Darlene is an Anishinaabe Kwe from and living in Atikameksheng Anishnawbek, Northern Ontario.

She is a writer, film director, and video artist. Her film work has been viewed internationally including the Sundance Film Festival. Her art based video work was installed in various galleries and programs nationally/internationally.

Darlene worked with community leaders and elders to write and ratify the Atikameksheng Anishnawbek Gchi-Naaknigewin (Constitution). She continues governance and First Nations land/human rights work in her community. On the film side, she is best known for the fiction features EVERY EMOTION COSTS and FALL AROUND HER. However, Darlene’s documentary work spans decades. She is currently completing AKI - a co-production with the National Film Board. AKI is a community-engaged feature documentary exploring narrative through a non-verbal, visual approach in Atikameksheng, Anishnawbek. Over the course of a year, the documentary reveals Indigenous survival, sovereignty, land-based traditions, family, community events, ceremony, the natural world, destruction, trauma, and the future of Atikameksheng Anishnawbek.

At this Junction North session, we will be treated to a sneak peak of AKI, and then have the opportunity to hear Darlene’s approach to filmmaking as a means of decolonizing the lens.

Northern Ontario Premiere

A COPS AND ROBBERS STORY

by Ilinca Calugareanu

Saturday April 2 at 4pm

2020  Documentary UK, USA  84 min

The relationship between perpetrators of organized crime and law enforcement officers has long been dramatized by crime fiction. Yet the criminal-to-cop narrative of NYPD Deputy Inspector Corey Pegues, while reading like a subplot from The Wire, is the real deal. Immersive dramatizations and interviews tell the story of Pegues’ origins as a member of NYC’s infamous Supreme Team gang and his subsequent turn towards policing, where he became the first Black commander of one of the most violent precincts in the city. A timely reflection that centres questions of police reform, Cops and Robbers is a lucid tale of dueling intrapersonal identities brought to reckoning.

Northern Ontario Premiere

THE MAGNITUDE OF ALL THINGS

by Jennifer Abbott

Saturday April 2 at 6:30pm

2020  Documentary Canada  1h 40 min

In Jennifer Abbott’s cinematic journey, the Sundance award-winning Director (The Corporation) draws intimate parallels between the experiences of grief—both personal and planetary. Stories from the frontlines of climate change merge with recollections from the filmmaker’s childhood on Ontario’s Georgian Bay. What do these stories have in common? The answer, surprisingly, is everything. The film takes us around the world to witness a planet in crisis: from Australia’s catastrophic fires and dying Great Barrier Reef, to the island nation of Kiribati, drowned by rising sea levels. In Nunatsiavut, melting ice permanently alters the landscape, while in the Amazon rainforest, Indigenous people fight a desperate battle against oil and mining extraction.

Northern Ontario Premiere

ASCENSION

by Jessica Kingdon

Saturday April 2 at 8:30pm

2022  Documentary China  Mandarin with English subtitles  97 min

Visually mesmerizing and masterfully crafted, the Oscar-nominated Ascension is a work of hypnotic genius shot in 51 locations across the People’s Republic of China. Documenting the county’s industrial supply chain without text and narration, the film interposes opposing images-wealth and poverty, movement and stasis, worker and consumer-to reveal a staggering tableau of contemporary China, its behemoth market system and the human life that flourishes within it. Dubbed “a symphony of productivity” by The New York Times and garnering universal accolades on the film festival circuit, Ascension investigates our timeless and universal questions about the paradox of economic progress.

LOCAL SHORTS Programme

VIP Guests in Attendance

Sunday February 26 at 10:30 am

Uncivilized

Canada 16 min. by Rawd Almasoud

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, some mainstream media outlets compared refugees from Ukraine with those from third world countries, and questioning the latter's civility. We follow the lives of 4 Syrian refugees in Calgary.

Ontario Premiere

PERDRE MARIO

Written and directed by Carl Leblanc

Dimanche 3 avril á 13h/1pm

2021  Documentary Quebec  84 min. Presented in French only, no subtitles are available

Le 22 mai 2015, Mario s’est logé une balle de calibre 22 dans la tête. En commettant ainsi l’un des 1200 suicides qui se sont déroulés au Québec cette année-là, il a plongé ses amis et ses proches dans un tourbillon de questionnements et de profonde tristesse, celui-là même qui assaille toute personne laissée brutalement dans le deuil par un départ volontaire et irrémédiable. Mario était le meilleur et le plus vieil ami du réalisateur de ce film. Dans ce documentaire, celui-ci décrit et décortique ce qui a précédé le geste ultime de Mario, de même qu’il démonte la mécanique du désarroi vécu par sa bande d’amis tissés serrés. Par extension, c’est le récit d’une expérience troublante que chacun de nous a malheureusement vécu ou vivra.

Ontario Premiere

LE LAC DES HOMMES /
BENEATH THE SURFACE

by Marie-Genevieve Chabot

Sunday April 3 at 15h/3pm

2021  Documentaire, Québec, Canada  75 min

Dans l’espoir de renouer avec leur père, trois frères s’embarquent pour un voyage de pêche avec celui qui les aura marqués par son absence. Pour Stéphane, Jean-Pierre, Jérôme et Laurent, ce sera l’occasion d’obtenir quelques réponses et peut-être, de faire la paix avec le passé. À bord du bateau qui tangue, leurs rêves et leurs regrets se faufilent parmi les lignes qui s’entremêlent. Ce voyage est une quête douce-amère vers un idéal familial perdu. Une incursion dans un univers masculin à réconcilier, où le courage se révèle parfois en brisant le silence.

Hoping to reconnect, three brothers embark on a fishing trip with their father, whose absence from their childhood has left them with lasting scars. For Stéphane, Jean-Pierre, Jérôme and Laurent, this is a chance to find some answers, and maybe even to make their peace with the past. On the gently rocking boat, dreams and regrets slip in and tangle up with their fishing lines. The trip is a bittersweet quest to find a lost family ideal. It’s a foray into a masculine world struggling toward reconciliation, where sometimes the most courageous thing to do is break the silence.

CLOSING FEATURE

Northern Ontario Premiere

FIDDLER’S JOURNEY TO THE BIG SCREEN

by Daniel Raim

Sunday April 3 at 5pm

2022  Documentary USA  88 min

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Daniel Raim puts us in the director's chair and in Jewison's heart and mind, drawing on behind-the-scenes footage and never-before-seen stills as well as original interviews with Jewison, Topol (Tevye), composer John Williams, production designer Robert F. Boyle, film critic Kenneth Turan, lyricist Sheldon Harnick, and actresses Rosalind Harris, Michele Marsh, and Neva Small (Tevye’s daughters).

The film explores how the experience of making Fiddler deepened Jewison as an artist and revived his soul.

Major Presenting Partners