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Movies

Supplied From left: Festival organizers Matthew Shoup, Taryn Edgeworth, Caden Nikkel, Kieran Peters.

Emerging film fest fosters creativity, community

Conrad Sweatman 4 minute read Monday, May. 25, 2026

While Ontario and Quebec film artists have long spoken ambivalently about working in the shadow of a cultural superpower, Prairie film artists tend to express a different kind of marginality.

“Canada doesn’t hold a candle to Hollywood and all that, but Winnipeg really struggles in the shadow of the folks in Toronto who set the agenda and who get most of the funding,” Winnipeg filmmaker Kevin Nikkel recently told the Free Press.

Nikkel’s son Caden, also a filmmaker, is driven by a similar sentiment.

He’s the programmer behind the Manitoba Emerging Filmmakers Festival (also organized by Matthew Shoup, Kieran Peters and Taryn Edgeworth). The festival, now in its third year, will show dozens of films next weekend in the Exchange District.

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Movies

Magnolia Pictures Things get chaotic when Bob Odenkirk moves to Normal, Minn.

Minnesota not-so-nice

Randall King 4 minute read Preview

Minnesota not-so-nice

Randall King 4 minute read Tuesday, May. 19, 2026

British director Ben Wheatley has always been adventurous in his penchant for traversing genre boundaries, including hardcore horror (The Kill List), the big-budget monster movie (The Meg 2), the cerebral art film (High-Rise), and his own invention, the acid-trip period piece (A Field in England).

With his Manitoba-shot latest, Normal, Wheatley adds neo-western to the list, citing inspirations such as Bad Day at Black Rock, John Sturges’s 1955 thriller in which a one-armed stranger (Spencer Tracy) arrives in a small town to investigate the suspicious death of a friend.

The stranger in town here is Ulysses (Better Call Saul’s Bob Odenkirk, completing a trifecta of locally lensed action movies along with Nobody and Nobody 2), who has come to the Minnesota burg of Normal to act as an interim sheriff after the suspicious death of the previous officeholder.

Ulysses has both his arms, but he arrives bearing the after-effects of a trauma from his previous job. And at first blush, Normal is a town where he can heal, given that the worst thing he encounters is a shouting match at the hardware store and a lackadaisical parking job by the saucy local barkeep Moira (Lena Headey).

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Tuesday, May. 19, 2026

Movies

Janus Films Edik Beddoes plays a troubled teen in the semi-autobiographical Blue Heron.

Canadian drama gets meta in layered exploration of mental health

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

Canadian drama gets meta in layered exploration of mental health

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Friday, May. 15, 2026

Delicate and devastating, this small Canadian drama starts with a voiceover narrative. A filmmaker (Amy Zimmer) speaks about the unreliability of childhood memory — how certain moments stand out with bright clarity while the larger context can be hazy.

She remembers her troubled older brother through images, through feelings, but as she has become older, she wonders what she might have misunderstood or missed.

Blue Heron, Toronto-based writer- director Sophy Romvari’s semi-autobiographical feature debut, becomes a layered investigation into family narratives and the elusive line between art and life. Excavating an often painful past, Romvari’s work is ambitious and quietly assured, but it maintains a frank humility in the face of difficult, perhaps unanswerable questions.

The film (in English, with some subtitled Hungarian) begins as an extended flashback to the 1990s as a Hungarian-Canadian family of six moves to Vancouver Island hoping for a fresh start.

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Friday, May. 15, 2026

Movies

Apple TV Tatiana Maslany stars in Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, premièring May 20.

TV that brings you home, whether you like it or not

Denise Duguay 5 minute read Preview

TV that brings you home, whether you like it or not

Denise Duguay 5 minute read Tuesday, May. 12, 2026

Escape is the theme of this edition of new-TV recommendations? Can you escape home? Or once decamped, can you ever return home? The first selection is the wisest of all, admitting that when pain and loss make their inevitable appearance, the only true path forward is through.

● Marty, Life Is Short (documentary premieres Tuesday, May 12, on Netflix)

Netflix is going ahead with director Lawrence Kasdan’s documentary celebrating the life of Martin Short, despite the recent death by suicide of the comic’s daughter. (The film was completed before her death.) Could definitely be seen as insensitive, or worse exploitive. Or, drawing from Short’s own playbook, that it’s not only OK but necessary for this show to go on. Before, during and after the time the Canadian-born comic actor was honing his skills on SCTV, Saturday Night Live, Only Murders in the Building and comedy tours with and without pal Steve Martin, Short has been impressively frank about the early deaths of his parents, his brother, his wife and recently friends and colleagues Catherine O’Hara and Rob Reiner. “Those kinds of situations are horrible,” he told The Guardian a few years ago, “but I think that you are either empowered by them or you become a victim of them.” This life and film lesson is yet another reason to be grateful for Martin Short.

● Dutton Ranch (series premières with two of nine episodes Friday, May 15, on Paramount+)

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Tuesday, May. 12, 2026

Movies

Vertical Entertainment / TNS Riz Ahmed’s Hamlet does cocaine and goes to nightclubs.

Though this be madness, yet there is method in it

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

Though this be madness, yet there is method in it

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Friday, May. 1, 2026

Something is rotten in the state of … well, almost everywhere these days, which might account for the recent rush of Hamlet adaptations, with an anime version (Scarlet), a documentary version (King Hamlet), an origin story (Hamnet), and even Grand Theft Hamlet, a version set inside a video- game.

This new reworking places Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy among contemporary London’s South Asian business elite, and the results are sometimes electrifying, sometimes frustrating but always intensely watchable, thanks to an intimate and anguished central performance by Riz Ahmed (The Sound of Metal).

Setting Shakespeare’s language against modern trappings can be tricky — this is probably the first version of the melancholy prince who snorts cocaine — but director Aniel Karia (Surge) and scripter Michael Lesslie (who worked on a 2015 version of Macbeth) mostly handle the update in ways that feel urgent and alive.

Hamlet, having returned to England for his father’s funeral, finds his widowed mother, Gertrude (Bollywood actress Sheeba Chaddha), about to marry his uncle Claudius (Art Malik, the veteran British character actor last seen in The Woman in Cabin 10).

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Friday, May. 1, 2026

Movies

Kevin Mazur / Lionsgate Jaafar Jackson does an excellent impersonation of his uncle during the extended concert sequences.

Controversial aspects of King of Pop’s life story ignored, results fall flat

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

Controversial aspects of King of Pop’s life story ignored, results fall flat

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Friday, Apr. 24, 2026

Michael Jackson was a musical genius and an electrifying performer.

He was also a troubled man, his legacy marked by accusations of child sexual abuse. This new film — which starts in 1966 in his family’s working-class home in Gary, Ind., and ends in a triumphant performance at Wembley Stadium in 1988 — is hoping the truth of that first statement will cover over the inconvenient realities of the second.

As a meticulously re-created concert film, Michael is a thriller, with Jaafar Jackson (the singer’s nephew) delivering expert dance moves and convincing (digitally blended) vocals.

As a biopic, financed and overseen by the Jackson estate and several members of the late superstar’s family, it is rote, flat and friction-free.

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Friday, Apr. 24, 2026

Movies

Joe Fuda photo Grace (Barbie Ferreira, right) becomes fascinated with Chevy (Stanley Simons) in Mile End Kicks.

Dramedy Mile End Kicks captures 20-something angst, confusion

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Preview

Dramedy Mile End Kicks captures 20-something angst, confusion

Alison Gillmor 5 minute read Friday, Apr. 17, 2026

Canadian writer-director Chandler Levack is becoming an auteur of spiky, self-aware, semi-autobiographical nostalgia.

Her 2022 feature debut I Like Movies related the awkward coming-of-age story of a teenage video store clerk in Burlington, Ont., in 2003.

In this deliberately loose dramedy, which debuted at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Levack sets her wayback machine to the summer of 2011 in Montreal. Grace (Euphoria’s Barbie Ferreira), a 24-year-old music critic, has just got off the bus, determined to do important work, have sex and possibly learn French.

Low rents on cool apartments in the neighbourhood of Mile End are drawing young artists, writers and musicians from all over Canada, Grace explains in an article she’s writing about the city’s indie music scene.

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Friday, Apr. 17, 2026

Celebrities

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS Mycze Cutler, musical director at the Crescent Arts Centre, will be playing the organ to accompany the moving images Saturday at the inaugural Winnipeg Silent Film Festival.

Wealth of musical talent providing the sounds of silents

Ben Waldman 4 minute read Preview

Wealth of musical talent providing the sounds of silents

Ben Waldman 4 minute read Thursday, Apr. 16, 2026

The score will be settled in real time on Saturday at the inaugural Winnipeg Silent Movie Festival, with local musicians set to provide live, improvised soundtracks to 10 films released between 1912 and 1929.

In order to meet the challenge, Mycze Cutler will rely on an instrument that predates any of the festival’s selections from the pre-sound era: a Casavant pipe organ, installed at the Crescent Fort Rouge United Church in 1911, one year before Lillian Gish made her film debut.

Used every week for worship, the Quebec-made instrument — equipped with strings, flutes and horns, as well as more than 2,000 pipes — will be employed by Cutler to improvise live scores to the festival’s closing projections, The Haunted House and One Week, both starring the inimitable Buster Keaton.

Cutler, the church’s music director, is used to improvising during services depending on the mood of the day’s hymns and the content of the sermon. As an accompanist for upcoming run of The Pirates of Penzance (opening April 24) from the musical theatre program of the Manitoba Theatre for Young People, Cutler has a clear plan to follow.

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Thursday, Apr. 16, 2026

Movies

HMN Photography Markian Tarasiuk directed, produced and stars in Hunting Matthew Nichol.

Unique distribution model benefits local filmmaker’s found-footage flick

Randall King 4 minute read Preview

Unique distribution model benefits local filmmaker’s found-footage flick

Randall King 4 minute read Wednesday, Apr. 15, 2026

Sneaking into Winnipeg’s Scotiabank Polo Park cinema last weekend like a cunning, silent demon, the low-budget horror film Hunting Matthew Nichols managed to succeed, reaping more than double its budget throughout North America thanks in large part to actor-director Markian Tarasiuk.

Tarasiuk, 33, is a Winnipeg-born Ukrainian-Canadian artist whose parents met performing in the Rusalka dance ensemble. (It doesn’t get more Winnipeg than that.)

Evidently inheriting the performance gene, Tarasiuk was performing on the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre stage by age 14 in the 2007 production Over the Tavern. By the age of 18, fresh out of River East Collegiate, he enlisted in the prestigious Vancouver theatre school Studio 58.

Currently dividing his time between Vancouver and Los Angeles, Tarasiuk has gained dozens of screen credits since then, but his work in Hunting Matthew Nichols — which he also produced — feels more personal, inspired by the terror he once felt seeing the found-footage thriller Paranormal Activity at Kildonan Place cinemas in 2007.

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Wednesday, Apr. 15, 2026

Movies

Supplied Jeffrey Thorsteinson (left) and Brenna Smith discuss local architecture in Meeting a Moment.

Fest’s films inspire dialogue about space, community

Conrad Sweatman 6 minute read Preview

Fest’s films inspire dialogue about space, community

Conrad Sweatman 6 minute read Wednesday, Apr. 15, 2026

Architecture + Design Film Festival surely boasts some of Winnipeg’s sleekest festival branding.

A wandering eye for design knows not just how to detail a facade, but how to ensure that the minutia of a poster looks just so.

However, the festival is about more than elegant films, buildings and branding. As its curator emphasizes, it’s also about ideas. Function along with form.

“We’re very pleased to bring films that are not readily accessible to people from all over the world,” says Susan Algie, executive director of the Winnipeg Architecture Foundation.

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Wednesday, Apr. 15, 2026

Movies

Apple TV Elle Fanning plays a glittery self-employed mom in Margo’s Got Money Troubles.

New series offer comfort of escapist fare

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Preview

New series offer comfort of escapist fare

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Tuesday, Apr. 14, 2026

A new lineup of recommended viewing leans heavily toward escapism. Except for the latest from Baby Reindeer creator and star Richard Gadd, from which some further escapism might be welcome. Onward!

● Trevor Noah: Joy in the Trenches (comedy special premières today, Tuesday, April 14, on Netflix)

Everyone could use a laugh right now and Trevor Noah is the comic for the job. Kind comedy with great, smart, muscular pokes at the bear of dread. Such as pondering what would be Martin Luther King Jr.’s new dream. Also featured will be, according to the publicity bumph, an “unexpected social media beef” and “a therapist’s truth bomb.” Cue applause.

● Margo’s Got Money Troubles (series premières on Wednesday, April 15, Apple TV)

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Tuesday, Apr. 14, 2026

Movies

Merit Motion Pictures Ballet Girls, directed by Elise Swerhone, follows aspiring young RWB dancers.

YouTube doc archive collects Manitoba films on topics from hockey to local haunts

Conrad Sweatman 4 minute read Preview

YouTube doc archive collects Manitoba films on topics from hockey to local haunts

Conrad Sweatman 4 minute read Tuesday, Apr. 14, 2026

Many of us remember when Kelekis closed in 2013.

But the iconic North End diner lives on in myth and memory, including an almost forgotten 1981 documentary called Kelekis — 50 Years in the Chip given second life thanks to a new initiative by the Documentary Organization of Canada’s Manitoba chapter.

The Manitoba Documentary Archive, launched on YouTube this fall at youtube.com/@MBDocArchive, showcases regionally made docs from across the decades. Some have been dusted off from the back shelves of the province’s filmmaking annals and are still gaining traction online.

Others are already doing a victory lap, such as Merit Motion Pictures’ popular Ballet Girls, directed by Elise Swerhone, which tracks a handful of young hopefuls as they strive and compete to join the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. It’s gained hundreds of thousands of views in the past few months.

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Tuesday, Apr. 14, 2026

Movies

Supplied Agatha Bock works 54 acres of vegetables and fruit, doing everything from seeding to harvesting by hand.

Portrait of 90-year-old’s quiet life packs powerful punch

Alison Gillmor 3 minute read Preview

Portrait of 90-year-old’s quiet life packs powerful punch

Alison Gillmor 3 minute read Wednesday, Apr. 1, 2026

‘You can have a life of joy and hope and love,” says Agatha Bock, the somewhat reluctant star of this luminous, lovely documentary. “But it’s not always easy.”

Agatha — who marks her 90th birthday during the filming of the doc — lives alone in her old family farmhouse in southern Manitoba.

She works 54 acres of vegetables and fruit, doing everything from seeding to harvesting by hand. She has no internet, no car, often no running water, but her world is rich in the ways that matter.

For this quiet, contemplative film, Saskatoon-based director Amalie Atkins, a multidisciplinary artist and Agatha’s niece, worked with an all-female crew, including cinematographer Rhayne Vermette, a Manitoban who is a director in her own right (Levers; Ste. Anne).

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Wednesday, Apr. 1, 2026

Movies

Spencer Pazer / Netflix Dan Levy returns to comedy in Big Mistakes.

Narco nannies, sharks and other TV dangers

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Preview

Narco nannies, sharks and other TV dangers

Denise Duguay 4 minute read Tuesday, Mar. 31, 2026

Anticipation has value, but it requires familiarity. Those viewers in that camp are already counting the days to the likes of the next Margaret Atwood-inspired feminist dystopia, The Testaments, which premières the first three of eight episodes on April 8, on Disney+. Fans of the Vermont-born singer-songwriter are already primed for the documentary-concert combo Noah Kahan: Out of Body, premièring on Netflix on April 13.

But this list of viewing suggestions is more targeted to the series and movies that are less well telegraphed, or more easily overlooked (hidden?) in the streaming-app menus. And so, behold five series and movies you might be less likely to already know about, but should give a try.

●Dear Killer Nannies (series premières with all eight episodes Wednesday, April 1, on Disney+)

Child care is an important consideration for every family. Despite being a violent Colombian drug lord, Pablo Escobar is no exception. His son Juan Pablo Escobar’s memoir is the basis for this new series, which centres the story of young Juampi, the hitman caregivers assigned by papa Pablo (John Leguizamo) and Juampi’s struggle over whether — and how — to accept or reject the family legacy.

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Tuesday, Mar. 31, 2026

Movies

Daniel Boczarski / Getty Images files Director BenDavid Grabinski frequented the Handsome Daughter while in Winnipeg.

Film director calls Winnipeg a ‘chill’ place to shoot

Randall King 5 minute read Preview

Film director calls Winnipeg a ‘chill’ place to shoot

Randall King 5 minute read Tuesday, Mar. 31, 2026

The action-comedy Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice (now streaming on Disney+) stars Vince Vaughn as Nick, a gangster who employs time travel to right a personal wrong.

So it’s only fair to ask the film’s director, BenDavid Grabinski, to step back into 2024, when he worked on the film in Winnipeg from May to October.

Winnipeg wasn’t a particular culture shock for Grabinski, by the way. Though he is based in Los Angeles, he was born in Nebraska and spent his formative years, ages 16 to 23, in Iowa, so he was familiar with a Prairie landscape.

“I gotta tell you, I had a really good time in Winnipeg,” says Grabinski, 43, during a Zoom interview Thursday. “I shot 42 nights in a row, so I didn’t get to have that much of a life.

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Tuesday, Mar. 31, 2026

Movies

Merit photo Jeff Newman (left) is the director of Athens: Birth of Democracy, co-produced by Winnipeg’s Merit Motion Pictures for CBC’s Nature of Things.

Tracing the roots of democracy to today’s fragmentation

Conrad Sweatman 5 minute read Preview

Tracing the roots of democracy to today’s fragmentation

Conrad Sweatman 5 minute read Thursday, Mar. 26, 2026

People sometimes joke that we would be no worse off if we picked someone at random from the phone book to rule the country.

Well, the ancient Greeks tried something just like that with their “kleroterion,” a slab of stone and primitive machine used by the Athenians to choose citizens for public office.

Near the end of Athens: Birth of Democracy, co-produced by Winnipeg’s Merit Motion Pictures for CBC’s Nature of Things, host Anthony Morgan and a group of students give this contraption a whirl under the blazing Athenian sun.

Students applaud as they’re randomly chosen by the machine’s system of dice. In reality, Athenians often grumbled at this rude imposition of civic duty.

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Thursday, Mar. 26, 2026

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