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Hamilton Spectator
31-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Hamilton Spectator
Gimli International Film Festival celebrates 25 years of film, community, and creativity
For 25 summers, the Gimli International Film Festival (GIFF) has transformed the shores of Lake Winnipeg into a cultural landmark, drawing cinephiles, filmmakers, and curious audiences to experience world-class cinema under the open sky. This year's silver anniversary edition, running from July 23 to 27, has already been one of the most dynamic yet. With dozens of Manitoban, Canadian, and international premieres, immersive workshops, filmmaker talks, and the iconic RBC Beach Screenings, GIFF 2025 offers not just entertainment but inspiration and a sense of community that's hard to replicate anywhere else. 'We're thrilled to be celebrating 25 years,' says Dre DeBattista, a coordinator with GIFF. 'From new releases to classic fan favourites, we're leaning into what makes this festival so special — its people, its setting, and its heart.' Originally a side program of the Icelandic Festival of Manitoba, GIFF began by showcasing local and Icelandic filmmakers. Now it has evolved into one of Canada's premier indie film festivals — yet it still honours its roots. 'You'll still see returning filmmakers like Guy Maddin,' says DeBattista. 'But we've also become a home for new voices — local, national, and international — who bring their stories to our screen.' GIFF 2025 presents a slate of stunning and emotionally charged films. Some must-see highlights include the Manitoba premieres of: Canadian premieres include: Festival goers take in an indoor film screening. Photo courtesy of Gimli International Film Festival website. Each night, hundreds gather barefoot in the sand for RBC Beach Screenings, where waves lap the shoreline and indie films flicker on a giant screen. It's an experience that has drawn international attention — and rightly so. 'This year we're showing some real gems,' says DeBattista. 'Some are classics from our early years, and others are new favourites. We've even got a dog parade tied to one of the films.' Beyond the screen, the GIFF grounds will be buzzing. Expect surprise appearances by groups like the Winnipeg Sea Bears, interactive beach activities, and crowd-friendly events blending arts, community, and whimsy. For aspiring filmmakers, GIFF isn't just a spectator sport. The festival offers hands-on workshops and masterclasses from accomplished directors including Noe Gonic, Matthew Rankin (Universal Language), and Brian Madden (Rumors). The sessions dive into everything from indie film financing to the creative storytelling process, giving attendees a rare chance to learn directly from the pros. For young creators looking to turn a script into reality, DeBattista offers advice: 'Find your community. Organizations like New Media Manitoba or the Winnipeg Indigenous Filmmakers Collective offer support, mentorship, and collaboration.' In Manitoba's growing film ecosystem — where over 50 productions were shot just last year — there's never been more opportunity to get involved, whether through union work on big studio sets or grassroots indie collaborations. 'It's easier than ever to get a good camera,' DeBattista says. 'But the real key is grit, collaboration, and a commitment to craft.' For passes, tickets, or more information, visit . — Steven Sukkau is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of the Winnipeg Sun. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada. Have thoughts on what's going on in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, or across the world? Send us a letter to the editor at . Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
Winnipeg Free Press
29-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
GIFF gold for Matthew Rankin, Noam Gonick
After earning six Canadian Screen Awards earlier this year for Universal Language, filmmaker Matthew Rankin's sunlit roadside memorial to communication and community took home top honours from the Gimli International Film Festival this past weekend. Told in complementary tones of voice and within shades of sandstone, Universal Language received Best of Fest honours from the grand jury and also earned Rankin the Alda Award, given to 'honour the cinematic and creative achievements of a filmmaker from Canada and the circumpolar nations.' Rankin, who also acts in the film, was presented the Alda by festival founder Janis Johnson. MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS FILES Matthew Rankin's already acclaimed Universal Language took top honours at the Gimli International Film Festival. For her own efforts to usher the festival into existence 25 years ago, Johnson was presented by Gimli MLA Derek Johnson with the King Charles Coronation Medal at the opening reception. Rankin is a longtime festival regular and Winnipeg Film Group student who won short film award honours in 2004 before receiving the fest's On the Rise award for his feature debut The Twentieth Century during a pandemic-altered 2020 festival. This year's best Canadian short comes from writer-director Stéphanie Bélanger, who explores that unshakable era in Lumen, a French-language short with a clickable tagline for anyone who had access to e-tail during COVID-19: 'A 70-year-old with a compulsive lamp-buying problem goes dark when an online seller refuses her offer.' A modern-day victory for queer futures comes via Noam Gonick's doc Parade: Queer Acts of Love and Resistance, which was celebrated as the best Manitoban film. 'An astonishingly cumulative look at Canada's history of queer activism,' wrote Randall King in a Free Press dispatch from the Hot Docs opening in April. Parade was co-produced by Winnipeg's Justine Pimlott, who shared a Peabody Award for best documentary earlier this year for Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story. Two local actors earned ACTRA Manitoba best performance honours for their work in films dealing with loss, both at and of home. In griePH, Winnipeg actor Kris Cahatol stars as an introverted, non-binary Filipinx who returns home for a work trip and struggles to cope with sudden loss upon arrival. Directed by MC de Natividad, the short film had its local première at this year's FascinAsian Film Festival. In Aberdeen, Gail Maurice soars as Kookum Aberdeen in a story of forced climate displacement along the banks of the Red River. Maurice, a Métis filmmaker-producer from Saskatchewan, is the anchor of the debut feature-film directing collaboration between Peguis First Nation filmmaker Ryan Cooper and Walpole Island First Nation's Eva Thomas. Following up 2023's audience choice award-winning positivity doc I Would Like to Thank My Body, writer-director Catherine Dulude returned with Petit Mollusque, which was named best Manitoban short. Narrated by André Vrignon-Tessier, Petite Mollusque tells a story of perinatal grief through vivid animation by Annie Castiblanco and Kaya Schulz, both paid interns through the Sisler Create program. Wednesdays What's next in arts, life and pop culture. Shared worlds torn asunder by shared, translingual trauma are stitched together by a united vernacular of pain in Noam Shuster-Eliassi's Coexistence, My Ass, which won the New Voices Award, sharing a potent message in a one-woman show about Israel-Palestine. Written in English, Farsi, Hebrew and Arabic, the film was written by Rachel Leah Jones and Rabab Haj Yahya. The National Film Board of Canada write-up for Siksikakowan: The Blackfoot Man asks filmmaker Sinakson, Trevor Solway's question in plain English: 'What does it mean to be a (Native) man?' To find the answer, Solway returns to Siksika, not far from Calgary, where he confronts the early pressures to 'cowboy up.' For the answer the artist provides, Solway was presented with the APTN Indigenous Spirit Award. Ande Brown, whose short film Better Late Than Never won the best Manitoban short at 2024's Reel Pride Film Festival, just completed his second short, First Shave. On the strength of those works, Brown won the RBC $15,000 emerging filmmaker pitch competition. The resulting feature, Half Naked, will screen next year in Gimli. 'I want to tell stories that reflect trans experiences with humour and hope,' said Brown. 'If this film helps someone feel seen or brave enough to share their own story, that's a win.' Ben WaldmanReporter Ben Waldman is a National Newspaper Award-nominated reporter on the Arts & Life desk at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg, Ben completed three internships with the Free Press while earning his degree at Ryerson University's (now Toronto Metropolitan University's) School of Journalism before joining the newsroom full-time in 2019. Read more about Ben. Every piece of reporting Ben produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Winnipeg Free Press
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Winnipeg-born director wins big at Canadian Screen Awards
Matthew Rankin began his speech in Farsi, took a detour into French and wound back toward English when accepting the Canadian Screen Award for achievement in direction Sunday for Universal Language, a feature film set at a dreamy intersection connecting Winnipeg to Tehran. 'This is delightful,' Rankin told the crowd at CBC's Broadcast Centre in downtown Toronto. 'I'm from Winnipeg — I'm not accustomed to winning anything — so this is really weird and sweet and nice, so thank you very much.' It's a line that Rankin will now be forced to retire: with six wins — including original screenplay, editing, costume design, casting and art direction, handed out at Saturday's industry gala for cinematic arts — Universal Language, shot in Winnipeg and Montreal, was a repeat champion on Sunday night. Chris Young / The Canadian Press Matthew Rankin won as best director; his Universal Language took home five more awards. Based for several years in Quebec, which Rankin hailed as 'one of the last places where art and culture is thought of and defended as a public good,' the director, who also co-wrote and co-starred in the film, was quick to mention his upbringing at the Winnipeg Film Group, where as a teenager he enrolled in filmmaking workshops. 'I really want to take the opportunity to thank all the weirdos of the Winnipeg Film Group,' he said, later mentioning the late Cinematheque programmers Dave Barber and Jaimz Asmundson in a message shared with the Free Press. 'This is where I learned how to make movies in an artist-run centre. Those people are really keeping Winnipeg weird, and I love that.' Universal Language, which was the Canadian submission to this year's Academy Awards for best international feature, had its world première in competition at Cannes. Last spring after a sold-out local première at the Centre culturel franco-manitobain, Rankin carved up several Jeanne's cakes with the film's title written on top in green Farsi script. In a five-star review for the Free Press, Alison Gillmor wrote that 'while the film is laugh-out-loud funny — literally — it is also, by the end, as the wandering characters are finally brought together, ineffably sad and delicate.' 'Rankin's work has always been clever and comic, but there's a new tenderness here as the filmmaker brings in autobiographical strands, fusing them into a poetic expression of regret, longing and the meaning of home and family,' she added. Rankin, who in addition to French and Farsi is also learning Esperanto, has built a stellar career playing with the narrative strands of Canadian identity and political memory. His debut feature The Twentieth Century is a fantastical reimagining of former prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King's origin story, while short films including 2014's Mynarski Death Plummet and 2010's Negativipeg are more localized, equally rewarding experiments in semi-fiction. Monthly What you need to know now about gardening in Winnipeg. An email with advice, ideas and tips to keep your outdoor and indoor plants growing. In February, Universal Language — co-written by Rankin, Ila Firouzabadi (who took home the best casting award) and Pirouz Nemati (who lost the award for leading performance in comedy to Cate Blanchett in Guy Maddin's Rumours) — was named best Canadian feature by the Toronto Film Critics Association, earning a $50,000 prize. Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television Universal Language co-writers and co-stars Pirouz Nemati (left) and Matthew Rankin 'This is a movie we made with our whole heart,' Rankin said Sunday. 'We all know what political moment we're living in. Every day there are new Berlin Walls shooting up all around us and pitting us against each other into very cruel binaries, and if our film stands for anything, it stands for the fact that kindness can, in fact, be a radical gesture, and that's really what we believe in now more than ever.' Other Winnipeg-related winners at the awards include the locally made Wilfred Buck, which nabbed David Schmidt an award for best editing of a feature-length documentary, and local writer Scott Montgomery as part of a team of winners for best writing, animation, for the Apple TV+ prodution Snoopy Presents: Welcome Home, Franklin. The 2025 Canadian Screen Awards show, which aired live June 1 on CBC and CBC Gem, is also available to stream on Crave as of 8 p.m. Monday. Ben WaldmanReporter Ben Waldman is a National Newspaper Award-nominated reporter on the Arts & Life desk at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg, Ben completed three internships with the Free Press while earning his degree at Ryerson University's (now Toronto Metropolitan University's) School of Journalism before joining the newsroom full-time in 2019. Read more about Ben. Every piece of reporting Ben produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Hamilton Spectator
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Hamilton Spectator
‘The Apprentice' wins best film at Canadian Screen Awards
'The Apprentice,' a Canada-Ireland-Denmark co-production about the early years of U.S. President Donald Trump, won best motion picture at Sunday's Canadian Screen Awards. Toronto's Daniel Bekerman is the lead producer of the Ontario-shot film, which portrays how Trump honed his persona, power tactics and media savvy under the mentorship of controversial fixer Roy Cohn. The drama bested 'Universal Language,' 'Darkest Miriam,' 'Gamma Rays,' 'Village Keeper' and 'Who Do I Belong To.' The film has won five Screen Awards in total, including best performance in a lead role for Sebastian Stan's turn as Trump, and best supporting actor for Jeremy Strong's portrayal of Cohn. Back in May, Bekerman told The Canadian Press that Trump's threat to impose a 100 per cent tariff on foreign films, citing national security, felt like a veiled reference to 'The Apprentice.' Bekerman denied that his film is a national security threat but said it might instead be 'an ego security threat' for Trump. 'This is not some sort of political attack film,' Bekerman said. 'It's actually not at all what it is. It is a humanistic story about choices people make in their lives and the consequences of those choices.' Trump's team attempted to block the film's theatrical release last fall, calling it 'election interference by Hollywood elites' and threatening to file a lawsuit. This year's Canadian Screen Awards bash was hosted by Edmonton-born comedian Lisa Gilroy in Toronto, capping off a multi-day celebration of Canadian film, television and digital storytelling. The televised ceremony put a bow on three days of awards shows, where major winners included the documentary 'The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal' and Matthew Rankin's film 'Universal Language.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 1, 2025.
Hamilton Spectator
01-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Hamilton Spectator
‘Universal Language' leads film contenders heading into Canadian Screen Awards
An absurdist Winnipeg-set fever dream and a millennial identity dramedy are among the leading contenders heading into tonight's Canadian Screen Awards. Matthew Rankin's 'Universal Language' picked up five awards in the film categories at a ceremony over the weekend and will compete for several more tonight, capping off a multi-day celebration of Canadian film, television and digital storytelling. It's vying for the best film trophy against 'The Apprentice,' 'Darkest Miriam,' 'Gamma Rays,' 'Village Keeper' and 'Who Do I Belong To.' Jasmeet Raina's Crave dramedy series 'Late Bloomer' won four awards at a gala for scripted television on Saturday, and is in contention tonight for best comedy series. It's up against CTV's 'Children Ruin Everything,' CBC's 'One More Time' and Crave's 'Don't Even' and 'Office Movers.' Edmonton-born comedian Lisa Gilroy says there's no better time to spotlight homegrown talent as she hosts tonight's Canadian Screen Awards, airing live from Toronto on CBC and CBC Gem. 'I know how hard it is to get TV shows and movies made (in Canada), and I'm so excited to celebrate the stuff that has been made,' she said in an interview earlier this month. 'It is so good and so funny. And we deserve to party.' 'Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent,' which led all nominees overall with 20, is up for several trophies tonight. It won two awards on Saturday for best writing in a drama series and best sound in fiction. It will square off for best drama series against CBC's 'Allegiance' and 'Bones of Crows,' Hollywood Suite's 'Potluck Ladies' and CTV's 'Sight Unseen.' 'Law & Order Toronto' actors Kathleen Munroe and Aden Young compete for best lead performer in a drama series against Grace Dove of Crave's 'Bones of Crows,' Mayko Nguyen of Citytv's 'Hudson & Rex' and CBC stars Supinder Wraich of 'Allegiance,' Hélène Joy of 'Murdoch Mysteries, Michelle Morgan of 'Heartland' and Vinessa Antoine of 'Plan B.' 'Universal Language' stars Rojina Esmaeili and Pirouz Nemati are nominated for best performance in a leading comedy film role. They're up against Maïla Valentir of 'Ababooned,' Paul Spence of 'Deaner '89,' Taylor Olson of 'Look at Me,' Emily Lê from 'Paying for It,' Cate Blanchett of 'Rumours' and Kaniehtiio Horn of 'Seeds.' Up for best performance in a leading drama film role are Sebastian Stan of 'The Apprentice,' Oshim Ottawa of 'Atikamekw Suns,' Britt Lower of 'Darkest Miriam,' Carrie-Anne Moss of ':Die Alone,' Chaïmaa Zineddine Elidrissi of 'Gamma Rays,' Sean Dalton of 'Skeet,' Christine Beaulieu of 'The Thawing of Ice,' and Olunike Adeliyi of 'Village Keeper.' In a last-minute programming shift on Thursday, the Canadian Screen Awards announced it would broadcast live on television — reversing earlier plans for a streaming-only show. Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television CEO Tammy Frick previously said going online-only allowed the show to be more 'flexible.' Some top nominees had expressed disappointment in March, telling The Canadian Press that a televised broadcast is key to spotlighting Canadian talent. The Academy said the decision to return to CBC TV came down to NHL scheduling — with no playoff game on Sunday, the two-hour show could air live. This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 1, 2025.
