The 16th Annual Gimme Some Truth Documentary Festival kicks off November 6-9 with new world documentaries, local and Canadian shorts programs and the Gimme 10 in 30! Documentary Challenge.
This year’s edition moves between the essayistic and the observational, the visionary and the handmade, where modes of seeing become acts of care, critique, and imagination. Collectively these films interrogate the threshold between documentation and dream, survival and spirit, reminding us that documentary is an act of reimagining the world as it might yet become.
Opening this year’s festival are A Life (1987) and Life Without Death (2000) by the late visionary Canadian filmmaker Frank Cole. His meditative and mythic explorations of endurance and mortality, and his uncompromising vision we felt the need to revisit.
We’re incredibly excited to welcome filmmaker and guest curator Mike Hoolboom to present two short film programs as part of his ongoing Capitalisms project, Capitalisms 1: Unlearning Lessons and Capitalisms 2: The Family You Choose, followed by a discussion and book launch for Mike Hoolboom: Work, moderated by Meganelizabeth Diamond.
This year’s shorts programs foreground documentary’s capacity to think through images with animation, choreography, found memory, critical observation, and meditations on place. These films inhabit the liminal space between testimony and imagination, redefining how truth is both seen and felt.
Shorts Program #1: “pastoral nocturnes” features films by Toby Gillies and Natalie Baird,Noa Blanche Beschorner, Mike Rollo, Sandy McLennan, James Dixon, and Kate Solar.
Shorts Program #2: “The Index Reframed” features films by Ebunoluwa Akinbo, Lina Saïdani,Marc-Olivier Huard, Ibrahim Shuaib, Justice Rutikara Jack Parker, Darcy Tara McDiarmid and Chantal Rousseau, and Caroline Monnet.
Join us on the closing night of the festival for our annual documentary challenge Gimme 10 in 30!, featuring 10 new short documentaries created by local filmmakers made in the 30 days prior to the festival. DOC Manitoba will be presenting a cash prize of $500 for the audience favourite.
Lastly, we’re proud to present a collection of thoughtful and challenging documentary films throughout the festival, including the 10th anniversary screening of Jesse Green’s Brown Town Muddy Water; Michael Almereyda and Courtney Stephens’ essay film about the mysteries of consciousness, John Lilly and The Earth Coincidence Control Office; Amalie Atkins’ Agatha’s Almanac, a powerful conduit for often-overlooked stories, amplifying voices and rural perspectives; Kamal Aljafari’s homage to Gaza and its people, With Hasan in Gaza; Sepideh Farsi’s Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk offers an intimate, first-hand perspective on life under siege in Gaza; Christopher Morris’ durational A Year In A Field tells the story of one Cornish field told over one climatic year.
We can’t wait to welcome you all back to the Dave Barber Cinematheque this November for our 16th Annual Gimme Some Truth Documentary Festival.
Thank you to our funders the Canada Council for the Arts, Manitoba Arts Council, and the Winnipeg Arts Council.
Thank you to our sponsor DOC Manitoba for their generous support for the Gimme 10-in-30 incubator.
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Festival Passes
All screenings at the Dave Barber Cinematheque, main floor, 100 Arthur Street unless otherwise noted.
General Admission: $11.50
Students/Seniors: $9.00
Members: $7.50
Festival Pass: $60 / $50 members
The festival pass includes admission to all screenings and events. Tickets and passes are available online or at the box office.
CLICK HERE to purchase the festival pass online.
SCHEDULE
Thursday, November 6 at 7:00 PM
The Films of Frank Cole: A Life
Dir. Frank Cole
1987, Canada, 75 min
One man, a room, and the Sahara, in this symbolically charged film, Frank Cole casts himself in the role of a man on a quest for immortality.
Thursday, November 6 at 9:00 PM
The Films of Frank Cole: Life Without Death
Dir. Frank Cole
2000, Canada, 83 min
A chronicle of Frank Cole’s amazing 7,100 kms camel-crossing of the Sahara Desert from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea.
Thursday, November 6 at 10:30 PM
Opening Night Reception – Artspace Lobby
Friday, November 7 at 5:00 PM
Capitalisms 1: Unlearning Lessons with Special Guest Filmmaker/Curator Mike Hoolboom
Capitalisms is an ongoing project begun in 2016. 12 features, 55 shorts. Here is the first of a two-program selection offering views from Nazareth, Victory Day in Russia, a mental health centre in Ohio. Essay miniatures. Hope ventriloquisms. Curated by Mike Hoolboom.
Friday, November 7 at 7:00 PM
Dir. Jesse Green
2015, Canada, 52 min
Brown Town Muddy Water honours the ancient relationship between Indigenous people and the meeting place known as The Forks. This television special chronicles musicians who shaped Winnipeg’s main street in the 1960’s like the late Percy Tuesday, Errol Ranville and Billy Joe Green. For the emerging urban Aboriginal community, echoes of home sounded through music, dance, story and gatherings. Peoples lived experiences of emergence, segregation, racism, camaraderie and resistance are as resilient as the downtown streets of Winnipeg. The professional musicians that grew up on this notorious strip paved the road to success for forthcoming generations of Indigenous artists. Join us as local music and memory reverberate throughout the decades! Brown Town Muddy Water 10th Anniversary Screening.
Join us for a post-screening discussion with filmmaker Jesse Green.
Friday, November 7 at 9:00 PM
John Lilly and The Earth Coincidence Control Office
Dir. Michael Almereyda and Courtney Stephens
2025, USA, 89 min
John Cunningham Lilly M.D. (1915-2001) sustained an extraordinary career through uniquely adventurous scientific research. His experimental projects were staged against the shifting backdrops of 1950s Cold War military science, the drug-infused counterculture of the 60s, and the environmental vanguard of the 70s. John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office, narrated by Chloë Sevigny, tells the story of Lilly’s quest, as one historian put it, to “get his hands on the steering wheel of consciousness” — a project that relied increasingly on psychedelics, leaving conventional science behind. Lilly invented the isolation tank and was a primary explorer in the study of dolphin communication, founding his own lab in Miami and St. Thomas, pairing a young female researcher with a young male dolphin in a partially-flooded house. In addition to this experiment’s circulation in pop culture, Lilly served as the inspiration for two Hollywood movies, The Day of the Dolphin and Altered States. The film reflects the scope of Lilly’s interests, the evolution of his public persona, and his interactions with equally exceptional contemporaries, including filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky.
Saturday, November 8 at 1:00 PM
Shorts Program #1 : “pastoral nocturnes”.
Short films by Toby Gillies and Natalie Baird, Noa Blanche Beschorner, Mike Rollo, Sandy McLennan, James Dixon, and Kate Solar.
Curated by Olivia Norquay.
Saturday, November 8 at 3:00 PM
Dir. Amalie Atkins
2025, Canada, 86 min
Fiercely independent 90-year-old Agatha Bock lives alone on her ancestral farm. Despite health challenges, she defiantly tends to her land, cultivating heirloom seeds passed down through generations. Employing antiquated techniques, Agatha plants and harvests her expansive field of watermelons, beans, flowers, herbs, and vegetables entirely by hand. Without a car, cell phone, running water, or even a functioning landline, Agatha’s meditative processes and daily rituals form a vivid counterpoint to the rapid pace of contemporary life. Made intentionally with sensory sensitive viewers in mind, the film carves out a (mostly) calm space in a chaotic world.
Shot by an all-female crew—including director Amalie Atkins and cinematographer Rhayne Vermette— over six years on 16mm film, using a windup Bolex and an ArriSR2 studio camera, the project captures the handmade materiality inherent in both the medium of film and Agatha’s tactile world. Her century-old farmhouse, with its grey exterior, contrasts with the bursts of vibrant colour and texture inside. Unchanged since the 1950s, her home serves as a living archive of a vanishing era, rooted in her esoteric practices that predate modern conveniences.
Agatha’s Almanac serves as a powerful conduit for often-overlooked stories, amplifying voices and rural perspectives. Agatha’s life offers a window into the experiences of a nearly lost generation, whose values and ways of living are at risk of fading as the world rapidly changes.
Saturday, November 8 at 5:00 PM
Dir. Kamal Aljafari
2025, Germany, Palestine, France, Qatar, 106 min
Arabic with English subtitles
Three MiniDV tapes of life in Gaza from 2001 were recently rediscovered. This footage is now a testament to a place and time that no longer exists. What started as a search for a former prison mate from 1989—a man lost to time and war— led to an unexpected road trip from the north to the south of Gaza with Hasan, a local guide whose fate remains unknown. As the camera moves through Gaza’s streets and landscapes, it records fleeting moments of everyday life—fragments of a reality now irreversibly altered. With Hasan in Gaza transforms this forgotten footage into a cinematic reflection on memory, loss and the passage of time, capturing a Gaza of the past and lives that may never be found again.
Saturday, November 8 at 7:00 PM
Capitalisms 2: The Family You Choose
With Special Guest Filmmaker/Curator Mike Hoolboom
How do we organize attention, and who do we grant this authority to? Perhaps the ‘second family’ of chosen ones (or did they pick you?) offers new portals and possibilities. This program looks at the too familiar aftershock of the American election (surely as Zizek suggested, everyone in the world should be allowed to vote on such an important matter), 9-1-1 (as it used to be known, the CIA-led coup in Chile) and Palestine. The program ends with an extended swim with my mother, followed by a closing letter from my friend Fred. Curated by Mike Hoolboom.
Sunday, November 9 at 1:00 PM
Shorts Program #2: The Index Reframed
Short films by Ebunoluwa Akinbo, Lina Saïdani,Marc-Olivier Huard, Ibrahim Shuaib, Justice Rutikara, Jack Parker, Darcy Tara McDiarmid and Chantal Rousseau, and Caroline Monnet.
Curated by Leslie Supnet.
Sunday, November 9 at 3:00 PM
Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk
Dir. Sepideh Farsi
2025, France, Palestine, Iran, 110 min
Arabic, English and Farsi with English subtitles
Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk offers an intimate, first-hand perspective on life under siege in Gaza, captured through video calls between director Sepideh Farsi and 25-year-old Palestinian photojournalist and poet Fatma Hassona. Combining raw immediacy with deep humanity, the film captures daily life during the conflict through the eyes and unwaveringly optimistic presence of Fatma, a talented photographer whose generation is trapped in an endless cycle of war, famine, and resistance. Her conversations with Farsi bring us into the heart of the conflict, even while their physical distance underscores the dire situation inside Gaza. Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk is an essential document that now stands as a heartfelt memorial and final testament: Fatma and her family were tragically killed by a targeted Israeli airstrike on April 16, one day after the film was announced as a selection of the Cannes Film Festival.
Sunday, November 9 at 5:15 PM
Dir. Christopher Morris
2023, UK, 86 min
With his camera and tripod, BAFTA-winning documentary filmmaker Christopher Morris began filming each day in a field near his home, telling the story of one Cornish field told over one climatic year.
Sunday, November 9 at 7:00 PM
Gimme 10 in 30! Documentary Challenge
Join us for the world premiere of 10 new short documentaries created by local filmmakers. Gimme 10 in 30! is a documentary incubator challenge wherein 10 participants chosen via random lottery draw were tasked with completing a new documentary film in 30 days. There were no restrictions or parameters to the films created, except they couldn’t be longer than 7 minutes long. The resulting films are presented here for your enjoyment and demonstrate the creative spirit and originality coming out of our local documentary scene. This program is rated 18A.
Short Films by: Vincent Allen, Mark Glenn Doroja, Toby Gillies, Angeline Javier, Yesenia Portillo, Kieran Redmond, Jo Rempel, Evan Rivard, Annie Dupas Rossington and Sydney Worden.
Sunday, November 9 at 9:00 PM
Closing Night Reception: Black Lodge Studio
