ReFrame’s 19th annual documentary film festival is taking place January 26 - February 3, 2023. The doc fest will screen 50+ films as part of its virtual festival, available to audiences across Canada. ReFrame will return to Showplace Performance Centre for a special in-person Opening Night screening. The full program will be released in early January but organizers are sharing a first look at films including: 

Opening Night (Thursday, January 26, 7p.m.): The in-person opening night event features the critically-acclaimed film All the Beauty and the Bloodshed by renowned filmmaker Laura Poitras. The film follows the life of artist and activist Nan Goldin on her mission to hold the Sackler family accountable for the opioid overdose crisis. Please note: Opening Night tickets are sold separately, and are not included in the purchase of a Virtual Festival Pass. This film is not available as part of the virtual festival.

Local film offerings will include Fault Lines: People, Work, and the COVID-19 Pandemic by Natasha Luckhardt and Rob Viscardis, Bob Romerein’s film Choices features Old Men Dancing exploring life’s defining choices from the perspective of aging, and Our Glorious Bodies, a short film by Frankie Mcgee, celebrates disabled bodies with community crowd-sourced images told through poetry. 

A diverse range of films in the Canadian spotlight include Eternal Spring from director Jason Loftus, about a state TV signal in China that gets hacked by members of the banned spiritual group Falun Gong (Canada’s submission to the Academy Awards), Ali Kazimi’s Beyond Extinction: Sinixt Resurgence which follows three Indigenous matriarchs through a decades-long struggle for recognition after the Canadian government declared the Sinixt people to be “extinct”, Okay! The ASD Band Film by filmmaker Mark Bone, where four musicians on the autism spectrum form a band and embark on creating an album together. Lastly, the acclaimed film Framing Agnes was created after filmmaker Chase Joynt discovered case files from a 1950s gender clinic, and enlisted a cast of trans actors to turn a talk show inside out, confronting the legacy of a young trans woman forced to choose between honesty and access. 

Opening Night tickets are $20 or pay-what-you-can, and available on the ReFrame website. For the in-person screening, masks will be mandatory and available on-site. Virtual Festival Passes as well as 5, 8, and 10-packs of tickets are available now through the ReFrame website, with pay-what-you-can tickets for single films to be released in January. ReFrame is a celebration of documentary film and media art with a lens on social justice. Stay cozy, and get your passes before they sell out! For more information, visit reframefilmfestival.ca.