Shipbuilder

Jan 1, 1985

0h 6m

★ 0.0

What would drive a man to spend 10 years of his life building a ship in the middle of the prairie 17 miles (27 km) from the nearest body of water?

Overview

This film recreates the true story of Tom Sukanen, an eccentric Finnish immigrant who homesteaded in Saskatchewan in the 1920s and 1930s. Sukanen spent ten years building and moving overland a huge iron ship that was to carry him back to his native Finland. The ship never reached water.

Genres

Documentary

Production Companies

ONF | NFB

Shipbuilder Trailers

Cast

Narrator

Kristjana Gunnars

Tom Sukanen

Galen Wahlmeier

Little Girl

Sasha Konowal

This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.

0.0

Jaddoland

Oct 25, 2018

Moving between the playful and the contemplative, explores the meaning of identity and home across three generations of an Iraqi family in Texas.

No Image Available

0.0

Fragile Harvest

Feb 5, 1986

How safe is the future of the world’s food? This documentary explores a growing crisis in world agriculture. Plant breeding has created today’s crops, which are high yielding but vulnerable to disease and insects. To keep crops healthy, breeders tap all the genetic diversity of the world’s food plants. But that rich resource is quickly being wiped out. (NFB)

7.8

Crownsville Hospital: From Lunacy to Legacy

Oct 18, 2018

Crownsville Hospital: From Lunacy to Legacy is a feature-length documentary film highlighting the history of the Crownsville State Mental Hospital in Crownsville, MD.

6.5

The Blood Is at the Doorstep

Mar 13, 2017

After Dontre Hamilton, a black, unarmed man diagnosed with schizophrenia, was shot 14 times and killed by police in Milwaukee, his family embarks on a quest for answers, justice and reform as the investigation unfolds.

0.0

The Farmer's Wife

Sep 21, 1998

A landmark portrait of three tumultuous years in the life of a Nebraska farm couple, chronicling three years of their struggle to save their farm and their marriage.

0.0

The Great Buffalo Saga

Aug 3, 1985

By the late 1800s the free-ranging buffalo of the western plains of North America were almost extinct. This documentary is the story of the buffalo's revival. Live action, eye-witness accounts and archival photos document our fascination with this ancient and legendary animal.

0.0

Beyond Silence

Feb 22, 2017

The lives of Jeff, Lauren and Lloyd—three very different people who share one common experience—have been transformed by speaking up for mental health. These inspiring stories depict what mental health in America really looks like and highlights just how important it is to speak up and seek help.

7.2

Ty-Peupe

Oct 26, 1971

The ideal of youth is at the centre of this eloquent film, mixing documentary and fiction, art and experimentation. Demonstrating both formal and narrative freedom, Bélanger weaves a deliberately loose weave in which the initiatory journey of two young people, wandering through Montreal in search of a job, unfolds. But not just any job. The two idealists want a job that will satisfy their desire for freedom, peace and respect. Of course, even though the breath of renewal from Expo 67 still floats here and there, the world they encounter does not correspond - by far - to their aspirations. Strangers in this country that tells them nothing, they come across brutally, materialism, violence, and egocentrism.

0.0

Highway of Tears

Invalid Date

Discover the endless highway in British Columbia where over 40 indigenous women and girls (by unofficial estimates) have disappeared since the 1970s.

0.0

Seven for Jack

Aug 18, 2022

Documentary on career criminal Jack Black during an episode of burglary in Victoria BC. Locations around Victoria and Vancouver are explored in present day, with narration from Black's autobiography.

10.0

Slowly Forgetting Your Faces

May 5, 2021

Two men, the hint of a sofa corner and a pile of letters. Using minimalist means, the film tells the story of two brothers caught between exile in a foreign country and resistance in the underground. It takes us back to the time when the revolution seized power in Iran and tells of life between the fronts. Daniel Asadi Faezi sketches the story of his father and his brothers - based on correspondence that has lain in the cellar for 30 years.

No Image Available

0.0

Migrant

Feb 17, 2018

A short visual poetic film on a Haitian migrant stranded in Tijuana, Mexico.

0.0

Just Watch Me: Trudeau and the 70's Generation

Sep 20, 1999

Canadian director Catherine Annau's debut work is a documentary about the legacy of Pierre Trudeau, the long-running Prime Minister of Canada, who governed during the 1970s. The film focuses particularly on Trudeau's goal of creating a thoroughly bilingual nation. Annau interviews eight people in their mid-30s on both sides of the linguistic divide. One tells of her life growing up in a community of hard-core Quebec separatists, while another, a yuppie from Toronto, recalls believing as a child that people in Montreal got drunk and had sex all day long. Annau has all of the interviewees discuss how Trudeau's policies affected their lives and their perceptions of the other side, in this issue that strikes to the heart of Canada's national identity.

0.0

Polaris

Jun 27, 2012

Work. Eat. Sleep. And back to work. For a long time skippers in the North East of Scotland could not find locals to work on their fishing vessels. That was until Filipino fishermen started coming to town for work. Both nationalities strive to shorten the distance between two very different worlds.

8.0

What Should We Have Done?

Oct 8, 2023

In 1983, the director’s 24-year-old sister developed symptoms of schizophrenia. Her parents couldn’t accept it—refusing to seek treatment for their sick child, they confined her to their house, to the point of even fixing a padlock on the front door to lock her in. Her younger brother, suspicious of his parents’ actions, began filming the family in an effort to openly question them. A family conflict that lasted over twenty years.

6.9

The Milk System

Sep 21, 2017

Milk is Big Business. Behind the innocent appearances of the white stuff lies a multi-billion euro industry, which perhaps isn't so innocent…

8.5

Dominion

Mar 29, 2018

Exposing the dark underbelly of modern animal agriculture through drones, hidden & handheld cameras, the feature-length film explores the morality and validity of our dominion over the animal kingdom.

0.0

The Dionne Quintuplets

Nov 19, 1978

In 1934, Elzire Dionne delivered five identical girls. The Dionne Quintuplets follows Cecile, Emilie, Marie, Yvonne and Annette through twenty-one years of strange upbringing. When the girls were just infants, the premier of Ontario issued a court order removing them from parental care. Cut off from the world and their family, over-publicized, viewed twice daily in a special viewing compound, they grew up as prize exhibits. Director Donald Brittain uses old newsreel footage, home-movie sequences and interviews to depict a historic event that became a tragic exploitation of a family.

5.7

Paul Tomkowicz: Street Railway Switchman

Jan 2, 1953

A self-narrated portrait of a Polish immigrant in Winnipeg whose unglamorous job keeping streetcar switches working reveals dignity, resilience, and pride in everyday labor.

Shipbuilder

Overview

Genres

Production Companies

Shipbuilder Trailers