documentary
Despair and devotion: a review of Fairy Creek
July 15, 2025By: Ashima Shukla, Staff Writer The year is 2025, and the world is in chaos: marked by economic instability, growing authoritarianism, ecological collapse, and an ongoing global erosion of human rights. In this moment, Fairy Creek arrives not just as a documentary but as an urgent cultural intervention and a powerful reminder that resistance is still alive. Like water seeping through stone, it moves steadily. Shaping. Persisting. Refusing to disappear. Directed by Jen Muranetz, this powerful film tells the story of Ada’itsx (Fairy Creek valley), one of the last remaining old-growth forests on Vancouver Island. In what became the largest…
Continue reading
No Other Land takes a haunting look at the horrors of Israeli occupation
February 24, 2025By: Yildiz Subuk, Staff Writer Content warning: mentions of genocide. No Other Land had been on my watch list since the day I heard about it. The lack of distribution for this film has been frustrating, as there aren’t many…
Continue reading
Tezeta, a dive into Ethiopia’s music scene and its Armenian influences
February 21, 2025By: Yildiz Subuk, Staff Writer Content warning: brief mention of genocide. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) film festival, held at the VIFF centre, has had an expansive catalogue of unique films and documentaries which capture stories from these…
Continue reading
Malartic, a town suffering at the hands of the Canadian mining industry
January 23, 2025By: Yildiz Subuk, Staff Writer The documentary, Malartic (2024), presents us with the story of the titular soul-stripped town. Located in Quebec, it has suffered socially and environmentally since its transformation into a commercialized mining project in 2011. The small…
Continue reading
Nobuko Miyamoto: A Song in Movement — establishing a cultural voice
November 26, 2024By: Yildiz Subuk, Staff Writer Content warning: mentions of internment camps. The Vancouver Asian Film Festival premiered brilliant films and documentaries this year. One that stood out was Nobuko Miyamoto: A Song in Movement, which tracks the life of third-generation…
Continue reading
Looking back at The Road Forward
June 19, 2024By: Izzy Cheung, Arts & Culture Editor Content warning: mentions of assimilation, residential schools, and cultural genocide. Colours bleed into the pages of a black and white newspaper as a low-tone humming surrounds the screen. The steady, heartbeat-like fervor of…
Continue reading
See Palestine from children’s eyes
March 4, 2024By: Riley Brown, SFU Student & Petra Chase, Arts & Culture Editor Content warning: mentions of genocide and violence. Children make up 47% of Palestine’s population, and Gaza’s median age was 18 in 2020. The low life expectancy of 75.7,…
Continue reading
The Lebanese Burger Mafia is a breakthrough in Arab Canadian cinema
November 22, 2023By: Omar Nsouli Living in Calgary for most of my life, I would often go on road trips to Edmonton with my family for long weekends to get a change of scenery. Midway between both cities is Red Deer, a…
Continue reading
Media to uplift Palestinian narratives
November 20, 2023By: Hailey Miller, Staff Writer Content warning: mentions of genocide, violence, and war. Editor’s note: this article was updated on November 24, 2023, to re-word instances of naming the Palestinian genocide a “conflict.” The word “conflict” assigns equal blame to…
Continue reading
Union Street captures Vancouver’s vibrant Black community through history
October 17, 2023By: Balqees Jama, SFU Student Content warning: mentions of systemic racism and displacement. Union Street is a documentary film highlighting Vancouver’s historic Black neighbourhood located in Strathcona. Known colloquially as Hogan’s Alley, it was systemically disrupted and displaced by the…
Continue reading
