Peterborough’s ReFrame Film Festival has announced the curated lineup of thought-provoking, enlightening, inspiring, and recently released documentary films that will be screened during the 2025 festival.

Once again being held in hybrid form, the 21st annual festival will take place in person from January 23 to 26 in downtown Peterborough, with virtual screenings available from January 27 to February 2.

The in-person screenings, inclusive of both full-length features and short films, will take place at Showplace Performance Centre (290 George Street) and Market Hall Performing Arts Centre (140 Charlotte Street). The virtual screenings, which include just over half of the films in the festival’s lineup, will be available on demand for ticket holders across Canada.

ReFrame Film Festival has been held annually in Nogojiwanong/Peterborough since 2005, with a focus on accessibly sharing films that are grounded in social and environmental justice issues.

To draw attention to their thematic, stylistics, or geographical connections, each film in this year’s lineup is grouped into one of six categories: “Close to Home,” “Film Forward,” “Rooted and Rising,” “Reel Embodiment,” “Place and Identity,” and “Evening Features.”

While several of the films are internationally made and tell stories outside of Canada, they explore universal and age-old questions about the purpose of life. Here are a few highlights of

The feature film Agent of Happiness asks viewers “How do you measure happiness?”

In south Asia, the Kingdom of Bhutan measures its “Gross National Happiness” under the belief that tenets of fulfillment should be measured when assessing a nation’s development. In the film, happiness agent Amber travels the Himalayan mountains to survey the contentment of its citizens, while he, too, contemplates and grapples with his own fulfillment.

Described as a “quiet, gently absorbing documentary” by The Guardian, Agent of Happiness is being screened in-person only on Sunday, January 26 at 5 p.m. at Showplace Performance Centre.

VIDEO: “Agent Of Happiness” trailer

Another film in the “Evening Features” category combines both social and environmental justice issues.

Razing Liberty Square is a documentary based in Miami’s Liberty City, where the oldest segregated public housing in the south is located. When rising sea levels threaten the beachfront, luxury property owners are being pushed higher inland, sticking residents of the historic Liberty Square public housing project with a $300 million revitalization plan for the neighbourhood.

Exploring climate gentrification as a new form of racial injustice, the film covers five years of the people who are most impacted by the developers’ bulldozers. Being screened both virtually and in-person at Showplace Performance Centre on Saturday, January 25 at 7:30 p.m., Razing Liberty Square is a story of race, climate, and gentrification.

Other feature film highlights on this year’s lineup include Unbound, a documentary about a group of abused, traumatized, and very talented dancers as they “reclaim the stage,” The Ride Ahead, about a 21-year-old facing life’s challenges with a rare genetic disorder, and Drawing A Line, which spotlights the creator of the popular Indian stick figure cartoon that makes socio-political commentary and challenges the taboos around menstruation, mental health, and queer rights.

While they are all rooted in regional issues, some of the films and their makers have a specific connection to the Kawarthas region.

Filmed by Peterborough filmmaker Rodney Fuentes, The Monarch Ultra documents a 2019 cross-continent run following the migration path of monarch butterflies from Peterborough to Central Mexico.

VIDEO: “The Monarch Ultra” trailer

The film, which premiered at the Market Hall Performing Arts Centre in October, follows local environmentalist Carlotta James and thousands of other runners joining on the 4,300-kilometre relay run. The journey is woven between interviews and in-depth knowledge about pollinators, community conservation movements, and the impact environmental decline has on pollinator habitats.

The film fits into the “Rooted and Rising” category of ReFrame, marked by stories of innovation and resilience highlighting how we live in partnership with the natural world. The Monarch Ultra will be screened in-person only at 10 a.m. on Friday, January 24 at Market Hall Performing Arts Centre.

“In telling this story to the world, we want people to be galvanized to action and to feel something about nature and about wildlife, so the documentary was central to this story,” James told kawarthaNOW ahead of the world premiere. “It’s such a beautiful thing to be lost in a movie for an hour or two and then come out feeling as though you’ve learned something, and then want to talk about it and do something about it.”

Another Peterborough filmmaker, Rob Viscardis will be screening My Dad’s Tapes during the festival, falling under the category of “Film Forward,” which includes films that undertook captivating and innovative approaches to filming.

Largely filmed in Courtice, the film documents director Kurtis Watson’s discovery of home videos recorded by his father during a time leading up to when he took his own life. With a combination of the tapes and conversations with friends and family, the film is a largely personal journey that fans of Viscardis’ other works (some of which have been screened at past ReFrame Film Festivals) will be familiar with.

“It’s about family relations, which is such a common thing for everybody. We all have these interpersonal relationships with our families,” Viscardis previously told kawarthaNOW. “Regardless of the themes around suicide, a lot of this film is about connection — caring for each other and being there and checking in and what not. In a broader way, the film raises awareness of mental health issues which, as a filmmaker, is a goal of mine.”

My Dad’s Tapes is screening on Saturday, January 25 at 12 p.m. at Market Hall Performance Centre, and will also be accessible during the virtual festival.

VIDEO: “My Dad’s Tapes” trailer

Falling into the “Close to Home” category, The Wild Path Home spotlights how the Peterborough-Kawarthas-Haliburton area was, in 2016, one of only 150 communities worldwide to be given the designation as a “Regional Centre of Expertise in Sustainability Education.”

Local specialists in environment, health, and educational fields, who were increasingly alarmed by the human draw to technology, made a framework of age-linked experiences to address global issues through community support, and saw young people being drawn back to the great outdoors to improve mental health, reduce stress, and improve leadership skills.

The Wild Path Home will be screened virtually and in-person at Market Hall Performing Arts Centre on Friday, January 24 at 5 p.m.

Other locally based films include the short films Logging Algonquin, documenting historical and ongoing logging in Ontario’s largest provincial park, and Backwoodsman, which looks at 19th-century lumbermen in the Kawarthas and how their musical heritage has persevered to the present day.

Under the “Reel Embodiment” category, festival-goers will see documentaries that are rooted in the intersection of gender, sexual identity, health, ability, and race.

House with a Voice fits into the category as it follows six Burrneshas — people who are assigned female at birth and who take a vow of chastity and live as men in patriarchal Albania. The German film will be screened virtually and in-person at Market Hall Performing Arts Centre on Saturday, January 25 at 2:15 p.m.

VIDEO: “House with a Voice” trailer

The final category “Place & Identity” unpacks the way place and home shapes us and informs the human experience.

The Day Iceland Stood Still recounts the morning in 1975 when 90 per cent of women in Iceland walked off their jobs and out of their homes, refusing to cook, clean, work, or care for the children.

Told with playful animations and the women recounting their stories for the first time, the film explores the collective power of women ahead of the strike’s 50th anniversary in 2025. Also available during the virtual festival, The Day Iceland Stood Still will be screened in-person at Showplace Performance Centre on Sunday, January 26 at 3 p.m.

VIDEO: “The Day Iceland Stood Still ” trailer

The festival will kick off on Thursday, January 23rd with an in-person opening night event, which will require a separate ticket (it’s not included with any of the passes). ReFrame will announce details about the opening night event soon.

Passes for the 2025 ReFrame Film Festival are now on sale, priced at $50 for a virtual pass (which includes just over half of the films in the festival’s lineup, viewable on demand from anywhere in Canada), $110 for an in-person pass (which includes access to all in-person films and events, except for the opening night event), and $135 for a hybrid pass (which includes everything in the virtual pass and the in-person pass).

Tickets will soon be on sale for individual screenings, on a pay-what-you-can sliding scale.

Passes and a guide to all the films screening at the 2025 festival are available at reframefilmfestival.ca. Follow ReFrame on Facebook and Instagram for updates and last-minute schedule changes.

kawarthaNOW is proud to be a media sponsor of the 2025 ReFrame Film Festival.