This National Canadian Film Day (April 16), join us for a day at the movies with a selection of short and feature films by Canadian filmmakers who are exploring living worlds beyond our own.
This event is presented in partnership with the City of Richmond. National Canadian Film Day is an initiative of Reel Canada.
All events are FREE.
Event Schedule
Wednesday, April 16, 2025
Richmond | Richmond Cultural Centre – Performance Hall, 7700 Minoru Gate (map)
1:00 – 3:00pm – Bergers (2024) – Register Now
3:45 – 5:15pm – Cielo (2018) – Register Now
7:00 – 8:30pm – Centrepiece Program: In another place, not here – Register Now
Program Details
Bergers (Shepherds)
Director: Sophie Deraspe | 2024 | 113 min | Drama | French with English subtitles
1:00pm @ Richmond Cultural Centre
Tired of city life, a Québecois man leaves everything behind to pursue his dream of becoming a shepherd in rural France, where he must work illegally at a craft he knows almost nothing about. While the work proves more difficult than he’d imagined, everything changes when he wins over the like-minded Élise with his dreams of a pastoral life together. The two commit to a summer-long journey together in the mountains – with 800 sheep, and all the challenges that come with them.
Featuring breathtaking cinematography and a deeply human story, this beautiful romantic drama won the award for Best Canadian Feature at TIFF 2024.
To save your spot, register here: https://who-roams-the-earth.eventbrite.ca
About the Director
Sophie Deraspe has made several feature films, including Les loups, the critically acclaimed Les signes vitaux, and Antigone, which won six Canadian Screen Awards. Her documentary work includes A Gay Girl in Damascus: The Amina Profile, and the series La Vie nous arrive. She has also directed episodes of Bête noire, and Motel Paradis. Bergers, a stunning film about a Montreal advertising executive turned shepherd in France, premiered at TIFF 2024. For more information on Sophie Deraspe and her filmography, visit: https://realisatrices-equitables.com/dames-des-vues/realisatrice/sophie-deraspe-2/
Cielo
Director: Alison McAlpine | 2018 | 78min | Documentary
3:45pm @ Richmond Cultural Centre
Cielo is a cinematic reverie on the crazy beauty of the night sky, as experienced in the Atacama Desert, Chile, one of the best places on our planet to explore and contemplate its splendour. Director Alison McAlpine’s sublime nonfiction film drifts between science and spirituality, the arid land, desert shores and lush galaxies, expanding the limits of our earthling imaginations. Planet Hunters in the Atacama’s astronomical observatories and the desert dwellers who work the land and sea share their evocative visions of the stars and planets, their mythic stories and existential queries with remarkable openness and a contagious sense of wonder. A love poem for the night sky, Cielo transports us to a space, quiet and calm, within which we can ponder the infinite and unknown.
To save your spot, register here: https://who-roams-the-earth.eventbrite.ca
About the Director
Alison McAlpine began her career as a published poet, inspired by family tales and the oral traditions of British Columbia where she grew up. Writer Alastair MacLeod dubbed her work as “film poetry” given its visual, dreamlike imagery. Discovering theatre in Ireland, she soon after founded a performance company and wrote and directed music-theatre works such as Chilcotin Sky and Still Moon on Fire, which toured Canada and Europe, collaborating with international theatre artists and actors who trained in clown/movement with Philippe Gaulier and Pierre Byland in France and Italy and at Canada’s Stratford Theatre.
Cielo, Alison’s first feature, premiered at the 55th New York Film Festival 2017, and has been presented at over 300 international film festivals and cinemas across the world including Karlovy Vary IFF; Hot Docs; Film Forum, New York City; TIFF Bell Lightbox Toronto; Ahrya Fine Arts by Laemle, LA; Filmhouse Edinburgh; Cinema du Parc Montreal etc. Named as “One of the best documentaries of 2018” by Esquire and The Guardian, Cielo has won several awards and four 2019 Gala Québec nominations. For more information about Alison McAlpine, visit her website: https://alisonmcalpine.com/.
Centrepiece Program: In another place, not here
Curator: Yani Kong | 115 min | Shorts
7:00pm @ Richmond Cultural Centre
A special program curated by Yani Kong, this collection of films demonstrates ways to practice flexibility in scale and perspective, thinking and seeing with plants, trees, animals, rocks, and points of view that are rarely centred. From a grain of sand to the inner world of a child, these short films experiment with non-human centred scales, and explore how we can enter into more effective combinations with/in the cosmos. This centrepiece program will be introduced by the curator, Yani Kong.
To save your spot, register here: https://who-roams-the-earth.eventbrite.ca
About the Curator
Yani Kong is a writer, editor, and scholar of contemporary art in Vancouver, Canada. She has published essays for The Photographer’s Gallery, London, UK; The Gordon and Marion Smith Foundation, Vancouver BC; The Freedman Gallery, Reading PA, and is a regular contributor to Galleries West. Kong hold a Doctorate in Contemporary Art from the School for the Contemporary Arts (SCA) at SFU, where she researched reception aesthetics, ethical philosophy, and contemporary art history. As the managing director of the Small Files Media Society and with the Low Carbon Research Methods Working Group she explores sustainable practices in streaming media and filmmaking. Kong is the Yukon/BC representative for the Universities Arts Association Congress.
Acknowledgements
Presented in partnership with the City of Richmond. National Canadian Film Day is an initiative of Reel Canada.