(Sara Katarina Burke & Aaron Andrew Keene, Portland, OR, 2023, 101 min)

FILM SYNOPSIS
“Feels like I’m still locked up and shit,” bemoans Wilder, a man recently released from prison. He fancied himself a badass character from Thelma and Louise; now he’s struggling to stay sober, get a job, and be a father for his 6-year-old son. Can’t Seem to Make You Mine traces Wilder’s struggle for self-determination, as he falls into an intoxicating relationship with a stripper he met on a pen-pal website while simultaneously making amends with his ex.

Jurors praised the film as an empathetic portrait of people living on Portland’s margins and struggling with addiction and the lingering stigma of incarceration, brought to life by bravura performances.

(Cady Voge, Seattle, WA, 2023, 83 min)

FILM SYNOPSIS
All We Carry is an award-winning doc that chronicles the three-year journey of a Honduran refugee couple as they navigate their new lives in Seattle. Mirna and Magdiel have survived narcotrafficker violence, the migrant caravan, and prison-like detention centers—and yet they remain haunted by all they’ve experienced. When a synagogue in Seattle offers them refuge, they slowly begin to build a better life for themselves and their toddler son, Joshua.

Jurors praised the film as an intimate, cinéma vérité look into the perilous journey taken by asylum-seekers.

(Derek Kwan, Vancouver, BC, 2023, 14 min)

FILM SYNOPSIS
During a ten-course, Chinese banquet-style dinner, an extended family deals with an unexpected guest who shows up to their baby’s 100-day celebration: their matriarch’s new boyfriend. Long-simmering family grievances come to a head in this quippy family dramedy.

Jurors highlighted 100 Days’ authentic and multilayered portrait of a modern Chinese-Canadian family, as well as the ambiguous storyline that keeps the viewer guessing.

(Amélia Simard, BC, 2023, 16 min)

FILM SYNOPSIS
Familiar Unknowns is a modern-day love letter to the defiant queer stories buried within archives. The film chronicles non-binary filmmaker Amélia Simard’s quixotic quest to find traces of francophone queer people in Vancouver from before they were born. With a grant deadline looming, they stumble upon André, an older French-Canadian gay man who lived in Vancouver for 25 years, and who shares his personal hidden visual archive.

Jurors praised the film for forging cross-generational connections between queer people, as well as for its distinctive, subjective documentary style.

(Sara Wylie, Vancouver, BC, 2024, 5 min, in English)

FILM SYNOPSIS
A meditation on crip time as resistance by a chronically ill filmmaker. Shot on Super 8 and non-toxically eco-processed with plant materials by hand.

Jurors loved Resistance Meditation’s skillful marriage of formal experimentation and political critique, and its gorgeous, downright hypnotic visuals.

(Scott Oshima, Seattle, WA, 2023, 13 min, in English)

FILM SYNOPSIS
At risk of erasure, Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo community fought to build a permanent home for its Japanese American arts and culture in 1980. In the quiet of the pandemic, 120,000 lumens observes the time and memory embodied by a building.

Jurors praised the film’s gorgeous meditation on the emotions and history embedded in architecture. As one juror put it, “I would love to see this film as an art installation at the Wing Luke!”