Reviews

Seven Alberta-made horror shorts screened under the title Alberta Kills at NorthwestFEARFest on October 18, with a program that moved from a two-minute comedy to a teenage revenge ritual and the nightmares of a young man caught in sleep paralysis.

ANCHOR Fest is underway in Charlottetown, with film screenings, concerts, comedy shows and an industry conference running through October 18.

OFF//SHOOTS, a new fall theatre festival presented by Ottawa’s Youth Infringement Festival, continues at Arts Court through Sunday, Oct. 11.

Rubaboo Indigenous Arts Festival has four days left in Edmonton, with the final stretch moving from a visual-art exhibition at CO*LAB to cabaret, theatre and a closing fashion show at CKUA’s Beresh Arts Den.

Saint-Joachim’s Festival de l’Oie des Neiges returns from Oct. 9, 2026 through Oct. 12, 2026 for a four-day festival that includes family programming, an artisan market, live music and activities tied to the fall migration of Greater Snow Geese through the Côte-de-Beaupré region.

The Bala Cranberry Festival returns to Bala, Ontario, from Oct 16, 2026 through Oct 18, 2026, bringing juried markets, art, live music, buskers and family programming back to the Muskoka community.

Banff Pride is already underway in Banff National Park, but most of the festival’s strongest public programming is still ahead, with drag and burlesque, film, live music, a queer market and several free or low-cost community events running through the week.

The Thanksgiving long weekend lands in the middle of a busy stretch for entertainment this year, with new television, films, albums and books arriving just before the holiday and major festivals running from coast to coast.

The 40th Edmonton International Film Festival heads into its final three days with several Canadian features still on the schedule, filmmaker Q&As, one of this year’s newly announced jury-award winners and a closing-night gala tied directly to Edmonton’s screen industry.

Boris Mojsovski’s Foreign Tongue spent three weeks filming in North Bay early last year.

Brandon D. Cox’s first feature, Last Moon, arrives at Cinéfest Sudbury on Sept. 24 after filming in Powassan, Ontario, last summer. The period werewolf Western has been selected for the festival’s Thursday gala presentation.

Samantha Chater’s first film as director runs five minutes, was shot on 16mm and is structured around archival correspondence.

Joella Cabalu grew up in the 1990s watching romantic comedies as, in her words, an “instruction manual” for relationships.

Thirteen-year-old Bryce Lee wants to make movies, and he wants the kids at his new school on Vancouver Island to take him seriously. He tells them he is related to Bruce Lee.

In October 2024, while her first short as a director, Uncommon Ground, was screening at the Vancouver International Film Festival, Musqueam filmmaker Faith Sparrow-Crawford was already talking about another film she was developing with her cousin, Scarlett Sparrow-Felix.

A project Hayley Gray began developing during British Columbia’s 2018 wildfire season will have its world premiere at the Vancouver International Film Festival this fall as a 94-minute feature.

Two years after taking home audience and performance honours at Edmonton’s Mosquers Film Festival, Somali-Canadian filmmaker Ilhan Abdullahi returned to the festival with her feature directorial debut.