Red Fever will open the 2025 ReFrame Film Festival. The documentary by Neil Diamond and Catherine Bainbridge reunites the team behind the multi-award-winning Reel Injun for an exploration of the appropriation of Indigenous culture. Red Fever leads a line-up of over 50 docs in ReFrame’s festival, which offers both in-person and online screenings.
Other docs at the Peterborough festival include a homecoming for filmmaker Kurtis Watson, whose feature debut My Dad’s Tapes offers moving portrait of his family’s confrontation of grief. Canadian features include Lisa Jackson’s acclaimed Wilfred Buck, about the Indigenous star seeker, which will screen as a special event. Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story continues the run for the festival circuit hit about the late trans soul singer. Similarly, Jen Markowitz’s Summer Qamp gives ReFrame a shot of queer joy with its snapshot of a camp for LGBTQ+ youths. Tasha Hubbard’s Singing Back the Buffalo rounds out the Canadian features with its look at the life cycles of the animal that historically fed Indigenous communities.
International features at the festival include the critical hit No Other Land, directed by the Palestinian/Israeli collective of Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor and Hamdan Ballal. The film observes the violence in Adra’s Palestinian village leading up to the events of October 7. In Agent of Happiness, meanwhile, directors Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó follow an official tasked with measuring Bhutan’s “happiness index” while searching for his own satisfaction. And in Drawing a Line, Sama Pana profiles the work of artist Rachita Taneja, creator of the Indian stick figure cartoon Sanitary Panels.
On the environmental front, Ben Judkins’ The Cigarette Surfboard looks at the possibilities entailed in thousands of cigarette butts. Also at the festival is Hot Docs hit Standing Above the Clouds, Jalena Keane-Lee’s intergenerational portrait of Hawaiian women protecting their family’s land. Meanwhile, Michael Gitlins’ The Night Visitors tells an unlikely adventure with moths.
On the shorts front, ReFrame boasts new works from filmmakers like Suzanne Crocker, Kimberly Reed, Chadi Bennani, Yvonne Sung, Uapukun Mestokosho McKenzie, Robyn Adams, Ilse Moreno, Nick van der Graaf, Anne-Marie Jackson, Laura Sky, Mustafa Al-Taiar, Conor DeVries, and Jasmine Liaw.
The 2025 ReFrame Film Festival runs January 23 to February 2.
