Diary of a Season
Canada Looks South
To many, one of the most shocking parts of moving to Canada is the wildly wide range between seasons: the scorching summers, the showering autumns, the freezing winters, the flowering springs. Through a seasonal frame, the films in this program explore life in Canada in a variety of forms – love, distance, depression, migration by way of fiction, documentary, and animation. Together, they shape a diary of fragmented entries that addresses a life in emotional and climatological transition.
Fried Fish & Plantain
Dir. Paul-Daniel Torres Canessa | Canada | 13 min
Two years from their first night together, Willie & Marisol have their “first date.” As they navigate a “post-pandemic” Toronto, they sift through who and what they’ve become amidst the circumstances, grief, and secrets that have kept them apart. Together, they discover if there can be love after loss. Starring TIFF 21′ Rising Star Emma Ferreira and Tiff Next Wave Alum Paul-Daniel Torres.
Paul-Daniel Torres is a director, writer, actor and community worker, born in the heart of Toronto. He grew up between the apartments next to the Jane and Finch Mall, St. Judes on Weston Road, and next to a dumpster in Thornhill. He was raised by his parents Mery and Paul, Ecuadorean immigrants (a cleaning lady and a superintendent, both with university degrees) who’d take him to the movies every Tuesday and Blockbuster every Friday.
This upbringing shines through in his visually and sonically eclectic style, inspired by the multicultural mosaic of Toronto and the Latine diaspora. Through his work he explores the pros and cons of the “immigrant dream”, being a child of immigrants on stolen land, race, class, education, mental health, identity, community and how these all intersect within neo-colonial systems. Ultimately, how it affects our ability to love and connect with one another. However, at his heart, he’s an entertainer, who wants his films to teach and enthrall.
epistolair
Dir. Dana Elizondo Pulido | Canada | 3 min
A cinematic letter where not everything is what it seems. Using an old digital camera, the film creates a nostalgic portrait of yearning, grief, and a refuge in nature.
Dana is a multidisciplinary artist with extensive experience in film, mixed media, animation, and performance. A first-generation Cuban-Mexican immigrant, she moved to Vancouver to pursue a major in Film and a minor in Gender Studies from Simon Fraser University. As an artist and filmmaker, she explores themes of feminism, diaspora, body politics, and nature.
Nuestra, À Nous, Ours
Dir. Juan Ospina & Santiago Posada Ruiz | Canada | 10 min
The Posada Ruiz family began calling Montreal home two decades ago, leaving everything they knew back in Colombia. Navigating their memories, the family retraces their journey, their relationship to the city, and the challenges that arise when trying to find a new home.
Juan Ospina & Santiago Posada Ruiz are two Colombian writers and filmmakers based in Montreal, QC They focus their interests on films and the representation of immigrants and diasporic communities, particularly within the Latinx diaspora.
S.A.D.
Dir. Vanessa Sandre | Canada | 15 min
During the depths of the Canadian winter, a Latina immigrant is diagnosed with Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D.). However, as a newcomer to the country, her struggles might be more profound than just a lack of sunlight.
Vanessa Sandre is a Brazilian-Canadian filmmaker based in Toronto. An alumna of the 2025 Directors’ Lab at the CFC’s Norman Jewison Film Program, she holds a Bachelor’s in Film and a Master’s in Literature, with a specialization in Women and Gender Studies. As a writer-director, her work has screened at over 60 international festivals and earned more than 30 awards.
As a Latina immigrant artist, she navigates diverse fictional genres to craft narratives that amplify underrepresented voices through a decolonial and intersectional feminist lens. Her storytelling is particularly drawn to the complexities of female sexuality, the elderly, and the intersecting themes of immigration and belonging.
Correspondence
Dir. Soléne Pango Salas | Canada | 5 min
In response to Dana’s correspondence film to myself, I explored the different layers that form Dana’s essence in my own life as I take a journey into my memory palace to find traces of her memory. She inhabits a place in my mind that reminds me of all the things she loves and all the things that I have yet to learn about her, forming a new promise to keep shaping my memory of her as we grow and change. It is a love letter to one of my best friends, in response to her own.
Soléne Pango Salas is a Vancouver-based filmmaker, originally born in Peru. She lived in Montreal for six years and later moved to Vancouver where she currently resides and studies film production at Simon Fraser University. She explores themes of identity and connection while pushing her narratives with technically complex setups.
Invisibles
Dir. Karla Meza | Canada | 10 min
INVISIBLES slips us into the fragile everyday world of two undocumented women drifting through the limbo of Canada’s immigration system after fleeing the violence that threatens them in Mexico.
Karla Meza is a Canadian-Mexican director and producer graduated from L’institut national de l’image et du son in Montreal and founder of Meztli Productions. Through her socially engaged cinematic works, she explores the complexities of fractured identity, exile and forced migration, while bridging personal stories with broader political and cultural contexts. Her short films have screened in more than 30 festivals across North America, Latin America and the Middle East.
summer diary
Dir. Francisca Duran, Cristal Buemi | Canada | 4 min
Abstract movement and the physical, compositional properties of foraged Tkaronto flora, strengthened our kinship to the land and each other. Gathering rituals, stop motion animation and phytograms, were used to create layers of ourselves intertwined through our latinx identities.
Anivides is the interweaving experimental works of multidisciplinary artists Cristal Buemi and Francisca Duran focusing on analog and digital frame-by-frame approaches to showcase their abstract, study and practices. Exploring the idea of weight on our structures due to environments, experiences and their direct relations to trauma, healing and transformation. With a focus on collages of bodily works both in human and plant forms from a diasporic immigrant, bipoc, femme, queer and intergenerational perspective. anivides’ recent film diario de verano has screened at Dawson City Film Fest, Les Sommet Du Cinema D’animation, Antimatter Media Art, Analogica, L’Alternativa and Moss Farm Film Invitational.