Shorts Program: Dreams of Sunlight Through Trees
Films
Mandaeans by Water
Noor Gatih’s spiritual and feminist work, Mandaeans by Water, honors her grandmother, one of the few remaining Iraqi Mandaeans, an ethno-religious group that faces ongoing repression. Through her exploration of light, voice, and the religious metaphors of water, Gatih delves into the affective dimensions of faith but also the connection between women in families, what is passed on and what is lost.
“Noor Gatih is a queer Iraqi-Canadian writer and filmmaker whose work delves into gender, identity, memory, familial relations, language, and female agency. Blending experimental and narrative forms, her films often take a playful yet incisive approach to storytelling.
Her work has been showcased across Canada and internationally. In 2021, her short film Visions of Basra premiered at the Independent Iraqi Film Festival and later screened in Vancouver, Toronto, Los Angeles, and Florence. Khobs & Chai followed in 2022 with a screening at TIFF Lightbox. In 2024, Noor participated in the Media Training Program with POV Film and was selected for the IYAM mentorship program, hosted by LIFT and Workman Arts. Through this program, she directed POP, an experimental short that premiered at the Rendezvous with Madness Festival.
Her work continues to engage with themes of dreams, womanhood and complex relationship dynamics, positioning her as a distinct voice in contemporary independent cinema.”
The Image Remains the Same
Originally conceived as an installation, Image Remains the Same by Ali El-Darsa contemplates water as an allegory of journeys filled with desire, belonging, hope, and demise stretching from the shores of the Pacific Ocean in Los Angeles to the Mediterranean Sea in Lebanon, specifically the El-Mina port, where Ali El-Darsa speaks to locals about emigrating from Tripoli’s shores to Europe.
Ali El-Darsa works across moving image, performance, installation and sound. His work examines structures of belonging in transnational contexts, emphasizing the role of time-based media in creating networked, mediated memories and narratives. He is a 2025–2026 fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart and was a 2022 fellow at Villa Aurora in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles.
Noongom
Nathan Alder’s new short Noongom explores themes of ephemerality and loss in the passing of everyday experiences. With a curious eye towards nature and home, Alder collages a myriad of colourful visuals and translation. Here, in the everyday, English and Ojibwe criss-cross and bump up against each other as he/she pronouns don’t exist in Ojbwe.
Nathan Adler is an artist, writer, editor, and filmmaker. He the author of Wrist and Ghost Lake (Kegedonce Press), and co-editor of Bawaajigan ~ Stories of Power(Exile Editions), he has an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC, is a first-place winner of the Aboriginal Writing Challenge, and a recipient of a Hnatyshyn Reveal award for Literature. He is Jewish and Anishinaabe, and a member of Lac Des Mille Lacs First Nation.
Dreams of Sunlight Through Trees
Dreams of Sunshine Through Trees is Theo Jean Cuthand’s latest film, part of an exceptional body of work that explores autobiography, queerness, madness, and indigeneity. As a middle-aged trans man, Cuthand reflects on the changes during the first year and nine months of his transition. Selfies, voice memos, drawings, and video clips from his life capture a man evolving and discovering himself through his second puberty. These joyful and humorous moments are contrasted with the ongoing news cycle of anti-trans legislation. The film feels timely as conservative movements have gained the upper hand in Canada and the U.S., fueled by politicians eager to scapegoat trans people for political gain.
Theo Jean Cuthand has been making work since the 90’s. He’s known for his videos, films, indie games, performances, and blog. His work often deals with Queer, Trans, Indigenous, and Mad identity issues, with a focus on the communities he belongs to and the oppressions they face.
Wînipêk
James Dixon’s work frequently engages with the complexities of Indigeneity and the landscapes of home. Wînipêk (also known by its colonial name, Winnipeg) examines the dispossession of Treaty territories, exploring themes of (dis)connection, and the longing for return and kinship with the land. Through a blend of collage, experimental film, and documentary aesthetics, Dixon reflects on these experiences and histories.
James Dixon is an Indigiqueer filmmaker and artist based in Winnipeg. With a BA in Film and Indigenous Studies from the University of Manitoba, James’ style combines abstract collaging and documentary aesthetics, to create work that revolves around his personal process of decolonization. Born in Saskatoon and raised in rural Manitoba, his work is regional, autobiographical and experimental.
Deliberate Ruins
Shirine Shah’s Deliberate Ruins is a poetic exploration of their first year away from home and the onset of their medical transition. Shot on 16mm Bolex and Mini DV, this experimental diary film weaves together a series of conflicting anxieties—between the self-propulsion of faith and the gravitational pull of returning to one’s origins. Through cryptic and often destructive poems, alongside vocalized diary entries, Shah delves into the complex tensions between choice and the inescapable weight of past histories. Intimate moments of dissonance blend with historical fragments that simultaneously trap and liberate the speaker.
Shirine is a writer and moving image artist born and raised in London. They became a filmmaker during their time at Conditions Studio Programme, a low-cost studio space which offers an alternative arts education in Croydon, South London. They have studied comparative literary theory and modern philosophy, and have often performed poetry and prose across the UK. They have had work published by Dazed, Abstractions, Gal-Dem, BBC. They have screened films in Milwaukee, Iran, and Portugal.
Fainting Spells
Fainting Spells by Ho-Chunk/Pechanga filmmaker Sky Hopinka unfolds through recollections of youth, learning, lore, and departure, crafting an imagined myth for the Xąwįska, or Indian Pipe Plant—used by the Ho-Chunk to revive those who have fainted. Transcending and mesmerizing, it drifts between and intertwines the spirit world, landscapes, personal notes tenderly written, and a lush, searching score.
Sky Hopinka is a Ho-Chunk Nation national and descendent of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians. He was born and raised in Ferndale, Washington and spent a number of years in Palm Springs and Riverside, California, Portland, Oregon and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In Portland he studied and taught Chinuk Wawa, a language indigenous to the Lower Columbia River Basin. His work centers around personal positions of homeland and landscape, designs of language and the facets of culture contained within. He received his BA from Portland State University in Liberal Arts and his MFA in Film, Video, Animation, and New Genres from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
His work has played at various festivals including ImagineNATIVE Media + Arts Festival, Images Festival, Courtisane Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, American Indian Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Antimatter Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, FLEXfest, and the LA Film Festival.
Hopinka was awarded jury prizes at the Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, the More with Less Award at the 2016 Images Festival, the Tom Berman Award for Most Promising Filmmaker at the 54th Ann Arbor Film Festival, and 3rd Prize at the 2015 Media City Film Festival.
Dreams of Sunlight Through Trees features exceptional experimental short films by Indigenous, Canadian and International artists, including Noor Gatih, Ali El-Darsa, Nathan Alder, Theo Jean Cuthand, James Dixon, Shirine Shah and Sky Hopinka.
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