A volunteer-driven film festival
Get ready for the ultimate showcase of Canadian indie films at The Canadian Independent Film Festival 2026 – CIFF, May 22th, 23h and 24th, 2026 at Casa d’Italia.
Program 2026:
Friday 22nd
Block 1 – 3:00 PM -5:00 PM
If they’re not dead, they’re still alive
My Fighter
It’s You and It’s Me
Hair Trails
The Lady Architect
Into The Light
Noise Complaint
Big Friendly Killbots
The Burden
Sunshine on His Face
Block 2 – 5:00 PM – 7 PM
Starwalker
Block 3 – 7:00 PM – 9 PM
What now ?
Q & A
Saturday 23rd
Block 1 – 1:30 PM -3:30 PM
Empty Your Pockets
Hanging on by a Sleeve
THE VOICE OF DESPAIR
LOVE LETTER
In Passing
Q & A
Block 2 – 3:30 PM -5:00 PM
LIFTED
Flight Risk
Black Gate
Yellow
The Border at Tolstoi
Q & A
Block 3 – 5:30 PM -7:00 PM
Straw Man.
Les Semelles du quartier
Invoca
Mine
Winners & Losers
Q & A
Block 4 – 7:00 PM -9:00 PM
The Last Reckoning
Q & A
Block 5 – 9:00 PM -10:00 PM
Networking event
Sunday 24th
Block 1 – 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM
Homes on the Range
On Queer Aging and Endings
When a Star Falls…
Q & A
Block 2 – 2:30 PM – 4:00 PM
ONLY TIME HEALS
Gale
The Last Shoes: A Fatherhood Story
Still Here
Q & A
Block 3 – 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Hank is in town ! Hank est en ville !
Q & A
Block 4 – 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Anorgasmia (a.k.a. All The Things We Do To Survive)
Q & A
Block 5 – 8:00 – 9:00 PM
Award Show
Screenplays:
The Projects in details
| Project Title | Project Type | Genres | Writers |
| Copy Centre 2000 | Screenplay | Satire, Comedy | Joe Rule |
| Haven | Screenplay | sci fi | |
| The Farm | Screenplay | Horror | Craig Urquhart |
| Good Looking Bachelors: The Musical | Screenplay | Musical, Comedy, Drama, Romance, LGBT | Brady Stanley |
| The Henchman | Screenplay | ||
| Changes | Screenplay | Sci-Fi, Comedy | Bill Birney |
| OUTHOUSE SHERRY | Screenplay | Eric Gerard Sollars, Ashley Kimberly Anne Schroff | |
| DUSTED | Screenplay | Jerry Rocco | |
| Lucid | Screenplay | Nicholas Michael Yunker | |
| The soulmate | Screenplay | Brahim Ourtelli | |
| A Shared Man | Screenplay | Heidi Walter | |
| Gouldberg’s Variations | Screenplay | Daniel Bourgeois | |
| St. George and the Cougars | Screenplay | Christopher Swider | |
| Bannockburn 1314 | Screenplay | Al Anderson | |
| The Red Zone | Screenplay | Terry Luke Podnar | |
| The Samurai Ghost and Ms. Jones | Screenplay | Nancee LaFayette | |
| Seven Days | Screenplay | Foster Marks | |
| RAINBOW ANGEL | Screenplay | Romance, DRAMA, LBGTQ | ANDRY PLATRITES |
| The Ghost of Di An [Zee Ahn] | Screenplay | War, Drama, Historical | Taylor Hunt |
| Phantom Limb | Screenplay | War, Psychological Thriller, Drama | Taylor Hunt |
| The World Turned Upside Down | Screenplay | Dennis O’Flyng | |
| The Connecting Betrayal Part One and Part Two | Screenplay, Television Script | Vivianne Rosenberg | |
| Dudes & Bros | Screenplay | ||
| Hank is in town ! Hank est en ville ! | Feature | film noir, drame, western | Feber E. Coyote |
| Edmund, My Man | Screenplay | Romance, Comedy, Drama | Kim Rapoport |
| Today While Resting | Screenplay, Short Script | Drama, Comedy | Tommy Britt |
| Just Another Day In The Life | Short Script | Faith based, Christian, Urban | Carl Bailey |
| Meguri’s Day at the Office | Screenplay, Short Script, Treatment | Animation for ages 6-10 | Yakiv Karchev |
| Arctic Circle | Screenplay | ||
| An Education | Screenplay | Drama, Romance, Family | Katherine Harold |
| The Masterclass | Short Script | Olivier Surprenant | |
| Scared Stillman | Screenplay | Justin Kagan | |
| Candyfloss | Short Script | Sarah-Kate O’Connor | |
| The Road Back To You | Screenplay, Short Script | Family Drama, True Story | Al Raif |
| Family Betrayal: Our Last Night In Baghdad | Screenplay, Short Script | Drama, True Story, Family | Al Raif |
| The Offspring of Hope | Screenplay | Al Raif | |
| FAT CATS | Short Script | ||
| Roads Taken | Screenplay | C.J. Palmisano | |
| Battle of the Grands | Screenplay | Comedy | Andrea Catherine Wahbe |
| The Last Reckoning | Feature | Crime-Drama, Drama, Mystery, Romance | Grant Gladish |
| Toaster | Screenplay | Dark Comedy, Comedy, Drama | Matt Hubbard |
| No Tell Motel | Screenplay | Jen Lynn Romnes | |
| Plume | Screenplay | Teague Caden Kennedy | |
| CADRE | Screenplay | Brian Streaty, Paul Rose | |
| Simulacrum | Screenplay | Sci-Fi, Horror | David Bayles |
| The Architecture of the Divine | Screenplay | Joy Sculnick | |
| VOODOO VALENTINOS | Screenplay | Michael Louis Gould | |
| Hair ghost | Short Script | JIAXIN He | |
| The Spectre’s Keeper | Screenplay | Gothic Mystery, Supernatural Period Drama | Natasha Zaman |
| Project Title | Synopsis | Duration | Project Type | Directors | Writers |
| What now ? | When Vincent, an unfortunate folk artist in his thirties, learns that he has been diagnosed with tongue cancer, he bursts out laughing! | 01:36:00 | Feature | Jocelyn Forgues | Jocelyn Forgues |
| When a Star Falls… | Leigh Dwyer – one of Hollywood’s newest stars, has died… A devoted fan of his, devastated by the news, journeys to the site of his death to find answers – questioning anyone she can with a connection to the star; especially his former classmates… | 00:20:00 | Short | Blake Ayliffe | Blake Ayliffe |
| Edmund, My Man | ARIELLE BRANCH used to be the keyboard and synth player for the hit indie band Uncle Homer, but her domineering mother/manager, EMILIA BRANCH, pulled Arielle out of the band under the mistaken belief that Arielle would have a popular solo career. | 100 Pages | Screenplay | Kim Rapoport | |
| Today While Resting | A new mother tries to rest after a nasty fall, but is unsettled when her baby son seems to advance impossibly fast while in her husband’s care. | 9 Pages | Screenplay, Short Script | Tommy Britt | |
| Gale | When her village is inadvertently destroyed by an ever-earnest gentle giant, Gran, the lonesome town matriarch, will have to let her guard down if she ever hopes to befriend the hulking construct and rebuild what has been lost. | 00:08:54 | Animation, Short, Student | Sean Kim | Sean Kim |
| Yellow | Yellow follows one man’s simple life as he leaves his subtle mark on a world full of people desperate to make a lasting impression. | 00:12:11 | Short | Ashley King | Ashley King |
| The Border at Tolstoi | A border guard at the US-Canada crossing of Tolstoi, Manitoba falls victim to the effects of a strange weapon that separates her mind from her body. | 00:15:30 | Short | Bob Kotyk | Bob Kotyk |
| Straw Man. | Based on true events and 4.5 star rated memoir of the same name, Straw Man follows a young man grappling with anorexia, self-doubt and social pressures to find acceptance and self-worth. | 00:25:00 | Short | Kearsten Johansson | Kearsten Johansson |
| It’s You and It’s Me | “It’s You and It’s Me” is a heartfelt and hilarious roommate comedy with a twist: the roommate happens to be your younger self. | 00:10:53 | Short | Mathew Bittroff | Clint Bargen, Jon Fehr, Mathew Bittroff |
| Anorgasmia (a.k.a. All The Things We Do To Survive) | After a failed attempt at a hostel luggage room hook up, Sam and Naomi think they will never see each other again. | 01:32:00 | Feature | Jon Einarsson Gustafsson | Jon Einarsson Gustafsson, Karolina Lewicka |
| Winners & Losers | Clark, a hyper-competitive high school nerd, comes up with a heist to steal an ultra-rare trading card with former best friend Dan and the wannabe criminal Isaac. | 00:13:09 | Short | Will Noble | Will Noble |
| Just Another Day In The Life | A veteran at the end of his rope ,experiences the Love of God in an unusual way after he attends a mens meeting. | 20 Pages | Short Script | Carl Bailey | |
| Starwalker | Star (Dilan Chiblow), an Indigi-Queer Two-Spirit lonesome call boy has become newly entranced by the world of drag when they are introduced to The House of Borealis, a popular drag house led by their charming matriarch, Mother (Stewart Adam McKensy). | 01:56:00 | Feature | Corey Payette | Corey Payette |
| Meguri’s Day at the Office | When a six-year-old girl accidentally spends the day at her father’s Tokyo toy company, she discovers that the best toys aren’t made with artificial intelligence—they’re made with imagination. | 13 Pages | Screenplay, Short Script, Treatment | Yakiv Karchev | |
| Arctic Circle | When an Inuit artist tracks his nephew’s killer to Manhattan, he’s forced to team up with a street-wise detective just to survive this foreign environment. | 115 Pages | Screenplay | Jeff Blyth | |
| An Education | A young woman goes through a journey of self-discovery after having met her birth mother, a refugee, and falling in love for the first time. | 52 Pages | Screenplay | Katherine Harold | |
| The Masterclass | While grieving the death of her mother, a young actress joins a prestigious method acting theatre company under a charismatic artistic director who pushes her past her breaking point. | 15 Pages | Short Script | Olivier Surprenant | |
| Empty Your Pockets | A young airport customs officer must secure an advance on his salary to afford his mother’s medication, navigating an absurd and totalitarian system. | 00:19:56 | Short | Tara Aghdashloo | Tara Aghdashloo |
| Scared Stillman | When high school star baseball player Lance Stillman and known troublemaker Stanley “Mugs” Mulligan get into a fight, they both get suspended. | 115 Pages | Screenplay | Justin Kagan | |
| Candyfloss | Proud Irish Travellers Chris and his wheelchair bound Dad Jimmy run the Candyfloss Stall at funfairs around the country. A chance meeting with an old school friend reminds Chris of what could have been his future. | 15 Pages | Short Script | Sarah-Kate O’Connor | |
| If they’re not dead, they’re still alive | If They’re Not Dead, They’re Still Alive is an immersive portrait of the Port-au-Port Peninsula, where French holds against distance and time. Following Mark Cormier, the last francophone storyteller in Newfoundland. | 00:10:00 | Documentary | Maïka Hearson | |
| The Last Shoes: A Fatherhood Story | The Last Shoes: A Fatherhood Story is a poignant exploration of the inevitable passage of time, framed through the tender relationship between a father and his son. | 00:04:06 | Animation, Experimental, Short | Al Raif | Al Raif |
| The Road Back To You | A family’s cycle of abuse threatens to tear them apart, but when a father confronts his past and seeks redemption, he must find the courage to break the pattern and save his son from a fate he once endured. | 16 Pages | Screenplay, Short Script | Al Raif | |
| Family Betrayal: Our Last Night In Baghdad | A family-devoted mother seeks refuge in her bigger family while striving for a better future for her children against a disloyal society. | 33 Pages | Screenplay, Short Script | Al Raif | |
| The Offspring of Hope | Set against the backdrop of Iraq’s economic collapse in the 1990s and post-war turmoil in 2003, (The Offspring of Hope) follows Adem, a young man from a once-wealthy family, as he strives to escape his crumbling homeland. | 140 Pages | Screenplay | Al Raif | |
| ONLY TIME HEALS | In idyllic Western Massachusetts, the members of a fractured family reckon with a recent death and the grief that follows over the course of one year. | 00:18:00 | Short | Victoria Roccaforte | Victoria Roccaforte |
| Still Here | Canada reported its first case of AIDS in March 1982. At that time, the average life expectancy for a person living with AIDS – the final stage of HIV infection – was one to three years. | 00:38:14 | Documentary | Darren McAllister | |
| FAT CATS | Six ex-pats start a dating podcast at the Dubai Marina, the show goes viral and within one year, all except the founder gets married, until one night he rescues a woman hanging from a high-rise apartment building. | 40 Pages | Short Script | ||
| Hair Trails | A great long braid becomes the guiding thread of this poetic short film. It begins on the edge of the world in Norway, where the mountains and the ocean awaken a voice hidden in the strands of hair. | 00:07:41 | Short | Sirel Heinloo, Einar Lints | Sirel Heinloo |
| Roads Taken | Told in reverse chronological order, ROADS TAKEN retraces the paths Sandy and Mercedes, Sandy’s doppelgänger, take as they wrestle fate, bad luck, and bad decisions in an attempt to rise above their lot in life. | 113 Pages | Screenplay | C.J. Palmisano | |
| Battle of the Grands | When two hot-headed grandmas, Diana and Evelyn Grand, compete to win their grandson’s affection at his Halloween-themed birthday party, their epic holiday season battle begins. Their rivalry escalates into an absurd and hilarious gift-giving war. | 100 Pages | Screenplay | Andrea Catherine Wahbe | |
| The Lady Architect | In 1937, Margaret Buchanan was the first woman to graduate in architecture from the University of Alberta, Canada. | 00:24:25 | Documentary, Short | Moira Simpson | Moira Simpson, Christine McDowell |
| The Last Reckoning | A prestigious attorney colludes with his impulsive brother to hide a manslaughter, but when an innocent is charged, their plans spiral out of control, leading to moral reckoning and inevitable judgment. | 01:42:04 | Feature | Garnet Campbell | Grant Gladish |
| Toaster | A man is driven to the edge of madness by an unrelenting horde of breakfast appliances. | 16 Pages | Screenplay | Matt Hubbard | |
| No Tell Motel | After being expelled from film school, a young documentarian begins filming her dying uncle’s life and the years he spent in prison. | 84 Pages | Screenplay | Jen Lynn Romnes | |
| Plume | It was the turn of the century and one of the most inhospitable stretches of land in the US had become a magnet for the most deplorable humans in the country. | 108 Pages | Screenplay | Teague Caden Kennedy | |
| CADRE | CADRE is a high-concept sci-fi thriller fusing ancient myth with modern conspiracy. Ancient legends of angels and swarms are revealed as encoded histories of past alien incursions. | 121 Pages | Screenplay | Brian Streaty, Paul Rose | |
| Big Friendly Killbots | BK, a friendly chef robot is apprehended after a high profile guest was found dead at his cafe. | 00:01:56 | Animation, Short | Nathan Thomas | Nathan Thomas, Marc Tanenbaum |
| Simulacrum | A woman awakes in a futuristic world with no memories or identity beyond her name: Leia. At first finding solace in an apartment assigned to her for her recovery, she soon finds herself thrust into a conspiracy of violence and betrayal, fighting for her life and sanity as she seeks to confront the doctor she thought was her caregiver. | 98 Pages | Screenplay | David Bayles | |
| The Architecture of the Divine | A 30-year-old woman commits suicide following a life of pain, trauma and deep loneliness. In the immediate aftermath of her death, she finds herself completely alone and invisible in the world until she meets the one person who can see her. Together, they discover a horrific childhood connection and learn that it’s never too late. | 214 Pages | Screenplay | Joy Sculnick | |
| Hanging on by a Sleeve | “Hanging on by a sleeve” is the intimate journey of Karine, a 16 years old girl who suffers from an eating disorder somehow related to a lack of maternal love. | 00:19:14 | Short | Catherine Turmel, Sarah Lajoie-Asselin | Catherine Turmel |
| Black Gate | When a grieving man discovers a mysterious portal in the woods, he’s thrust into a nightmarish loop where every choice to save his best friend only leads to another tragic death. | 00:13:40 | Short | Gabriel Harb | Gabriel Harb |
| VOODOO VALENTINOS | When two teenage guys, ‘losers’, on their way to a party in 1975, flag down a witch-doctor-driven taxi, their ‘winner’ expectations for the night turn stratospheric. Comedy ensues courtesy of a powerful, self-image-boosting voodoo potion, the effects of which are wondrous as they are life-scarring. | 100 Pages | Screenplay | Michael Louis Gould | |
| THE VOICE OF DESPAIR | The Voice of Despair delivers a powerful affecting narrative told from a new perspective – that of an unborn child. Conceived because of a brutal sexual assault, the film brings the audience within the womb of his mother. | 00:14:29 | Short | Nina Goldvin | Nina Goldvin |
| LOVE LETTER | Young Thipi is upset by the news that her classmate (and crush) Ryan, is moving away so decides to write him a letter in the hopes that it will fly to wherever he is. The film is a love letter to both Ryan, and her Parkdale life. | 00:06:06 | Short | Thipika Balakrishnan | Thipika Balakrishnan |
| Hair ghost | In a high-pressure boarding school, a supernatural urban legend becomes a terrifying reality when a student’s hidden obsession with her roommate’s beauty spirals into a violent psychological breakdown. | 13 Pages | Short Script | JIAXIN He | |
| The Spectre’s Keeper | In 1933 Old Québec, a young socialite narrowly survives a near collision after acquiring a mysterious mahogany chest haunted by the spectre of a disgraced tycoon with a shadowy past. | 83 Pages | Screenplay | Natasha Zaman | |
| Into The Light | Into the Light follows two young South African surfers whose lives could not be more precarious and whose dreams, against all odds, carry them across an ocean they were never meant to touch. | 00:38:00 | Documentary | Mikey Corker | |
| In Passing | Two young romantics, Maya and Alex, navigate life in the same city, their lives unfolding in parallel as they unknowingly cross paths again and again. As they each search for love in their own way, their near encounters hint at something more. | 00:22:28 | Short | Lucas Nasu Nielsen, Ben Taylor | Lucas Nasu Nielsen, Ben Taylor |
| Noise Complaint | A man is interrupted while trying to take a relaxing bath. | 00:04:21 | Experimental, Short | Julien Cloutier | Julien Cloutier |
| Flight Risk | While texting Mitchell, a boy she met online who lives on the other side of the country, Mona imagines three scenarios that might occur if he came to visit. | 17:03 | Short, Romance, Comedy, Drama | Devin Gillis | Devin Gillis |
The Canadian Independent Film Festival CIFF 