International award winners and homegrown favourites lead the documentary side of this year’s Blue Mountain Film and Media Festival. (Full disclosure: I am a member of the programming team along with POV contributor Jason Gorber, who serves as the director of programming.) The festival, running May 29 to June 1 in the Blue Mountains, announced the full line-up for its fifth edition today, which includes three Canadian premieres on the documentary front: Shelf Life, Middletown, and Front Row.
Shelf Life, directed by Ian Cheney, offers a savoury journey through the wonders of cheese. The documentary tours the globe to learn how different corners of the world create unique versions of the mouldy delicacy as Cheney considers the food through lenses both cultural, nutritional, and philosophical. It’s sure to inspire audiences to up their cheeseboard games as they learn more about their favourite wine pairings.
In Middletown, Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss uncover an incredible time capsule as students from a 1990s’ high school film class revisit footage they shot on assignment. The documentary explores the students’ investigative wizardry and reminds audiences of the power of filmmaking as the class reunites to revisit the images anew.
Front Row, directed Miriam Guttmann and executive produced by Sarah Jessica Parker, observes the Ukrainian war effort through an artistic lens as members of the Ukrainian National Ballet Company stage a prayer for peace. War veteran Oleksandr “Teren” Budko becomes the company’s guest of honour after losing both his legs in combat, putting his body and sacrifice on the world stage while using a soldier’s discipline to learn the choreography. (Fun fact: Budko was also the catch on a recent season of Ukraine’s The Bachelor.) Front Row previously screened at DOC NYC, while Middletown premiered at Sundance and Shelf Life debuted at Tribeca where it won the doc prize for Best Cinematography.
Other documentaries screening at Blue Mountain include Ryan White’s Come See Me in the Good Light. The acclaimed film offers an intimate portrait of spoken word artist Andrea Gibson as they embrace the poetry of life with partner Megan Falley following a cancer diagnosis. Come See Me in the Good Light is quickly establishing itself as a favourite with critics and audiences alike on the 2025 festival circuit: it won the overall audience award at Sundance in January and recently picked up audience awards at Boulder International Film Festival, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, and Cleveland International Festival. It also won Best Documentary at Boulder.
Meanwhile, audiences at Blue Mountain can catch the talent that POV called “the most exciting new voice in documentary” with Elizabeth Lo’s Mistress Dispeller. The intimate infidelity tale observes a woman who makes a career by infiltrating marriages in order to save them. The acclaimed film was nominated for three CinemaEye Honors and scored prizes at the Venice Film Festival, Chicago International Film Festival, Denver International Film Festival, New Orleans Film Festival, and Camerimage where it won the top prize for documentary.
Canadian docs at the festival include Larry Weinstein’s Beethoven’s Nine: Ode to Humanity. The film considers the enduring appeal of the composer’s “Ode to Joy” while Weinstein grapples with the tragic events of October 7 that give his film an unexpectedly personal angle. In So Surreal: Behind the Masks, directors Neil Diamond and Joanne Robertson trace the history of Yup’ik masks that were adored and coveted by artists in the Surrealist movement. Other docs at the festival include Gaucho Gaucho, The Cowboy and the Queen, Janis Ian: Breaking Silence, and the classic music doc The Last Waltz, which screens as an outdoor presentation, as does Christopher Guest’s mockumentary Best in Show.
On the dramatic side, Blue Mountain opens with the Canadian premiere of Racewalkers, a comedy by Kevin Claydon and Phil Moniz with a spring in its step. The film tells the story of a washed-up baseball player (Claydon) who gets headhunted by an ambitious coach (Moniz) to train in the highly competitive world of racewalking with an eye for Olympic gold. The cast and creators will be at the festival for the screening.
The festival also features the Canadian premiere of Bad Shabbos, Daniel Robbins’ black comedy about a family gathering that assumes hilariously tragic consequences throughout the evening. The film won the audience award at the Tribeca Film Festival and stars Kyra Sedgwick, David Paymer, and Method Man. Also screening at Blue Mountain as a Canadian premiere is Aontas, a gripping Irish thriller about three women who stage a robbery at their small town credit union that goes horribly wrong. The film by Damian McCann, told in Irish, unfolds backwards Memento-style as it explores the circumstances that force the three women to crime.
A luckier bit for the Irish arrives in Four Mothers, Darren Thornton’s warmly funny story about Edward (James McArdle), a male nurse and author who plans to ditch his mother (Fionnula Flanagan) so that he can make a trip to the States for a book tour as his first novel becomes a hit for LGBTQ+ youths. However, his three friends thwart the itinerary by skipping town for a Pride weekend, leaving him to care for their mothers. What follows is an unexpectedly cathartic journey as Edward and his mother confront the past.
Other dramas at the festival include Durga Chew-Bose’s adaptation Bonjour Tristesse, Boris Lojkine’s multi-award winning migration drama Souleymane’s Story, Julie Delpy’s political satire Meet the Barbarians, Chloé Robichaud’s wickedly funny Two Women, and Matthew Rankin’s Oscar submission Universal Language. Finally, Blue Mountain includes some marquee events such as the Saturday soirée screening of The Friend, a dramedy starring Naomi Watts, Bill Murray, and Bing the dog, along with an Ojibwe presentation of George Lucas’s Star Wars (Anagong Miigaadin). Tickets are now on sale for this year’s festival.
