The largest Canadian film festival in the world goes virtual in 2021! Check out the lineup for the Kingston Canadian Film Festival - screenings begin February 26.
Enhance your festival experience with these recommended film and book pairings. KFPL staff have hand-picked titles that expand on the themes explored in the festival lineup. Watch for our tie-in film recommendations when the festival wraps!
Homesick for Another World
Pair with Anne at 13,000 Feet. Dangerous, delightful, and laugh-out-loud funny. A master class in the varieties of self-deception and the human condition.
All the Bright Places
Pair with Anne at 13,000 Feet. A heart-wrenching, unflinching story of love shared, life lived, and two teens who find each other while standing on the edge. New York Times bestseller.
A Line Made by Walking
Pair with Anne at 13,000 Feet. Exploring wildness, the art world, mental illness, and community, this is a profoundly beautiful and powerful meditation on life.
The Marriage Plot
Pair with Anne at 13,000 Feet. Mitchell loves Madeleine. But Madeleine loves Leonard. An age-old plot unravels itself yet again.
Blood Oranges
Pair with Bloodthirsty. Quinn is queer, foul-mouthed, a formerly homeless ex-junkie, and a well-read high school dropout, who’s bitten by a werewolf and a vampire in the same night and becomes a hybrid of the two. First in a series.
Kitty and the Midnight Hour
Pair with Bloodthirsty. Kitty is a midnight-shift DJ for a Denver radio station -- and a werewolf in the closet. Sick of lame song requests, she accidentally starts "The Midnight Hour," a late-night advice show for the supernaturally disadvantaged - and it becomes a raging success. First in a series.
The Clay We Are Made Of: Haudenosaunee Land Tenure On the Grand River
Pair with Beans. A retelling of the history of the Grand River Six Nations from their Creation Story, through European contact to contemporary land claims negotiations.
Where I Belong
Pair with Beans. Haunted by recurring dreams, an adopted young woman travels to Quebec to gain a sense of identity with her Mohawk birth heritage.
Time Bomb: Canada and the First Nations
Pair with Beans. Predicts a forthcoming uprising in Canada from the First Nations communities unless government action is taken to redress their grievances.
Mohawk Interruptus Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States
Pair with Beans. Examines the Mohawks of Kahnawáa:ke struggles to articulate and maintain political sovereignty through centuries of settler colonialism.
Oka: A Political Crisis and Its Legacy
Pair with Beans. Swain was deputy minister of Indian Affairs throughout the 78-day standoff. He argues that true reconciliation will not be possible until government commits to meaningful reform.
Annie Pootoogook: Cutting Ice
Pair with Call Me Human / Je m'appelle humain. Pootoogook's life speaks to both possibility and heartbreak, issues of truth and reconciliation, the richness of community, and the depths of tragedy.
Split Tooth
Pair with Call Me Human / Je m'appelle humain. A fierce, tender, heartbreaking story. Tagaq moves effortlessly between fiction and memoir, myth and reality, poetry and prose, and conjures a world and a heroine readers will never forget.
Grandma, What's An Ulu For?
Pair with Call Me Human / Je m'appelle humain. In this picture book for children, a grandmother demonstrates how to use an ulu to her grandchild, discussing its history and traditional uses.
Saqiyuq: Stories From the Lives of Three Inuit Women
Pair with Call Me Human / Je m'appelle humain. Vivid portrait of the changing nature of life in the Arctic during this century, presenting the cycles of life against contrasting experiences.
Polar Vortex
Pair with Drifting Snow. Moving from the city to a picturesque countryside town, Priya is running from her past. Seductive and tension-filled, Polar Vortex is a story of secrets, deceptions, and revenge. A Giller Prize finalist.
The County Murders
Pair with Drifting Snow. Set against the idyllic backdrop of Prince Edward County, The County Murders is one part mystery and one part small town saga.
The Company We Keep
Pair with Drifting Snow. Five strangers gather in a cafe week after week, they find friendship, face their grief and learn that new beginnings are always possible.
The Flame: Poems And Selections From Notebooks
Pair with Death of a Ladies Man. A stunning collection of Leonard Cohen's last poems, selected and ordered by the author in the final months of his life.
Death of a Lady's Man
Pair with Death of a Ladies Man. Maddening, thrilling, and truly singular, Cohen's sixth book contains some of the most challenging and startling work of his oeuvre.
The Dying Animal
Pair with Death of a Ladies Man. Roth performs a breathtaking set of variations on the themes of eros and mortality, license and repression, selfishness and sacrifice. A burning coal of a book, filled with intellectual heat and not a little danger.
The Fruitful City: The Enduring Power Of The Urban Food Forest
Pair with First We Eat. Fruit trees dot city streets and yards. Moncrieff investigates the surge of non-profit urban harvest organizations that try to prevent that food from rotting on concrete and meets the people putting rescued fruit to good use.
Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History Of Food, From Sustainable To Suicidal
Pair with First We Eat. New styles of agriculture and food production are driving both climate change and global health crises. Bittman explains how we can rescue ourselves from the modern wrong turn.
The Right To Be Cold: One Woman's Story Of Protecting Her Culture, The Arctic, And The Whole Planet
Pair with FIrst We Eat. Explores the parallels between safeguarding the Arctic and the survival of Inuit culture--and ultimately the world--in the face of past, present, and future environmental degradation.
Wildcrafted Fermentation: Exploring, Transforming, And Preserving The Wild Flavors Of Your Local Terroir
Pair with First We Eat. Wild-gathering greens, stems, roots, berries, fruits, and seeds, each in their season, is a great way to work with your local environment and reconnect with nature in a deeply rewarding and positive way.
Forgive Me If I've Told You This Before
Pair with How to Fix Radios. Set in rural Oregon in 1989, this heartfelt YA novel follows Triinu Hoffman, a shy and intellectual teen who comes out as a lesbian whilst her state debates legislation that would allow discrimination against gay people.
One in Every Crowd
Pair with How to Fix Radios. This collection of short stories about the author’s experiences growing up in the Yukon is for anyone who has ever felt different or alone in their struggle to be true to themselves.
Aristotle And Dante Discover The Secrets Of The Universe
Pair with How to Fix Radios. Aristotle and Dante are two very different teens, but when they spend time together they discover they share a very special friendship.
The Spellman Files
Pair with The Kid Detective. Described as part Nancy Drew, part Dirty Harry, Izzy Spellman is a talented sleuth with a checkered past working for her dysfunctional family of private investigators. First in a series.
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
Pair with The Kid Detective. The first in a long-running series, following Flavia De Luce, from her first appearance as an 11-year-old sleuth.
A Study in Charlotte
Pair with The Kid Detective. First in a series following the adventures of Sherlock and Watson's great-great-great-grandchildren, Charlotte Holmes and Jamie Watson, from their meeting at private school Sherringford to their first year at Oxford University.
The Little Friend
Pair with The Kid Detective. Harriet plans on solving the decade-old case of her brother's murder, like her favourite fictional detectives, but she’s a terrible sleuth, causing a death along the way.
Seeing a Large Cat
Pair with The Kid Detective. For those looking for something to keep them busy through the rest of the winter, a long-running historical mystery series. The middle books in the series (v 9 Seeing a large cat (1997) through v 16 Lord of the silent (2001) and onward feature the evolution of one character from precocious kid detective to WWI intelligence agent.
Our History Is The Future: Standing Rock Versus The Dakota Access Pipeline, And The Long Tradition Of Indigenous Resistance
Pair with The Magnitude of All Things. Traces traditions of Indigenous resistance leading to the #NoDAPL movement from the days of the Missouri River trading forts through the campaign for Indigenous rights at the United Nations. At once a work of history, a personal story, and a manifesto
There's Something In The Water: Environmental Racism In Indigenous And Black Communities
Pair with The Magnitude of All Things. Explores the erasure of marginalized voices when environmental racism intersects with white supremacy, power, racial violence, and capitalism, and documents resistance and mobilization in Indigenous and Black communities.
Footprints: In Search Of Future Fossils
Pair with The Magnitude of All Things. A profound meditation on climate change and the Anthropocene and an urgent search for the fossils--industrial, chemical, geological--that humans are leaving behind.
This is a Book About Kids in the Hall
Pair with Mouth Congress. Fans of Mouth Congress are sure to enjoy this oral history of the band’s side-project, the Gemini-winning sketch comedy troupe, Kids in the Hall.
Any Night of the Week: A D.I.Y. History Of Toronto Music, 1957-2001
Pair with Mouth Congress. Veteran music writer and co-founder of the Wavelength Music convert series chronicles Toronto’s outsized influence on popular music in the latter half of the 20th century.
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History Of Punk
Pair with Mouth Congress. This oral history of American punk rock is a masterful exercise in oral history in which interviews play off each other to create a vivid portrait of the times.
My Salinger Year
Pair with My Salinger Year. Poignant, keenly observed, and irresistibly funny: the memoir that inspired the film.
Ayesha at Last
Pair with My Salinger Year. Ayesha's dreams of being a poet have been set aside for a teaching job so she can pay off her debts to her wealthy uncle. This modern take on Pride and Prejudice is humorous, lighthearted chicklit with a literary twist.
Confessions of a Bookseller
Pair with My Salinger Year. One cozy, funny, year with a Scottish used bookseller as he stays afloat while managing staff, customers, and life in the village of Wigtown. This endearing world is the next best thing to visiting your favorite bookstore.
Less: a novel
Pair with My Salinger Year. A struggling novelist travels the world to avoid the awkward wedding of his ex-boyfriend in this hilarious Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Light, quirky, literary and funny.
My Mystery of Mrs. Christie
Pair with My Salinger Year. December 1926: England unleashes the largest manhunt in its history. The object of the search is not an escaped convict or a war criminal, but the missing wife of a WWI hero, up-and-coming mystery author Agatha Christie. A fun, fictional mystery about a classic author
The Bone Cage
Pair with Nadia, Butterfly. Captures the euphoric highs, and darker cruel side of amateur sport. With realism and humour, Abdou captures athletes on the brink of that transition--the lead-up to that looming redefinition of self.
Godspeed: a Memoir
Pair with Nadia, Butterfly. At fifteen, Casey is one of the fastest swimmers in the world. She is also an addict. In searing, evocative, visceral prose, Casey gives language to loneliness in this An evocative, visceral story of survival, defiance, and of the embers that still burn when everything else in us goes dark.
Butterfly: from Refugee to Olympian
Pair with Nadia, Butterfly. The inspiring story of how one woman saved fellow refugees from drowning--and how she went on to become an Olympic swimmer.
The Peerless Four
Pair with Nadia, Butterfly. More than a sports or women's rights novel. A meditation on sacrifice, loyalty, commitment, perseverance, and the courage to live a true underdog tale.
Stone Butch Blues
Pair with No Ordinary Man. This ground-breaking and acclaimed novel looks at the world through the eyes of a masculine girl growing up in the McCarthy era and coming out as a young butch lesbian in the pre-Stonewall gay drag bars of a blue-collar town.
Tomboy Survival Guide
Pair with No Ordinary Man. Coyote, celebrated Canadian storyteller and the author of multiple books, writes about their years as a young butch and life as a gender-box-defying adult.
Felix Ever After
Pair with No Ordinary Man. In this layered story about identity, Felix fears that he’s one marginalization too many - Black, queer, and transgender - to ever get his own happily-ever-after.
Soar, Adam, Soar
Pair with No Ordinary Man. In this tribute to his son, Prashaw chronicles his son Adam’s drive to define himself, his joyful spirit, and his love of life despite many obstacles.
Policing Black Lives
Pair with No Visible Trauma. Policing Black Lives is a timely exposure of historical and contemporary practices of state-sanctioned violence against Black lives in Canada.
Policing Indigenous Movements
Pair with No Visible Trauma. Authors Crosby and Monaghan explore how the expansion of police security and surveillance has functioned to cast Indigenous movements as national security threats.
The End of Policing
Pair with No Visible Trauma. Vitale argues that the expansion of police authority is inconsistent with community empowerment, social justice--even public safety.
Create or Die: Essays On The Artistry Of Dennis Hopper
Pair with Out of the Blue. This collection of essays is the first major work to take in Hopper as a creative artist in all his fields of endeavour, from acting and directing to photography, sculpture, and expressionist painting.
Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer For Freedom
Pair with Out of the Blue. An essential document of this galvanizing historical moment. It includes letters from prison, courtroom statements, defense attorney closing arguments, poems, the infamous punk prayer and tributes.
So Real It Hurts
Pair with Out of the Blue. Through personal essays, interviews, and poetic verse, punk musician and cultural icon Lydia Lunch claws and rakes at the reader's conscience in this powerful, uninhibited feminist collection.
The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany {Begins Her Life's Work} At 72
Pair with Paper Man. The fascinating story of Mary Granville Pendarves Delany (1700-1788) who created the mixed-media collage art form. Her astonishing 985 botanically correct, breathtaking cut-paper flowers are now housed in the British Museum and referred to as the Botanica Delanica.
500 paper objects: new directions in paper art
Pair with Paper Man. Part of the 500 Objects fine arts series, showcases amazing artworks made from paper. Make your own with Cutting Paper Sculpture, Pop-up design and paper mechanics, or The Fine Art of Paper Flowers.
The Paper Magician
Pair with Paper Man. Fantasy novel about a magician who uses paper to work magic. An extraordinary adventure both dark and whimsical that will delight readers of all ages; first in a four-part series.
Extreme origami
Pair with Paper Man. Profiles Won Park’s sculptures made from paper money.
La rivière sans repos
Pair with Restless River. Gabrielle Roy's final novel on which the film is based.
Sanaaq
Pair with Restless River. An intimate story of an Inuit family negotiating the changes brought into their community by the coming of the qallunaat, the white people, in the mid-nineteenth century.
Life Among the Qallunaat
Pair with Restless River. Memoir of an Inuit woman's experiences growing up in the communities of James Bay, and her journey to the strange land and stranger customs south of the Arctic in the 1950s.
What I Remember, What I know: The Life of a High Arctic Exile
Pair with Restless River. Audlaluk's family was relocated from Nunavik to the High Arctic in the early 1950s. They were promised a land of plenty, what they found was an inhospitable polar desert.
Mystics of Mile End
Pair with Shiva Baby. Long-held secrets square off against faith, secularity and sexuality in this tale of a dysfunctional Montreal family.
The Mathematician's Shiva
Pair with Shiva Baby. This compelling family saga begins when the greatest female mathematician in history dies. Her son just wants to mourn in peace but rumor has it the she has spitefully taken one of the most difficult mathematics solutions to her grave.
Spirit Bear and the Children Make History
Pair with the short film Spirit Bear and Children Make History. In this picture book for children, Spirit Bear travels to an important human rights case in Ottawa to stand up for First Nations kids.
Little & Lion
Pair with Shiva Baby. Suzette returns home to Los Angeles from boarding school and grapples with her bisexual identity when she and her brother Lionel fall in love with the same girl.
The Orange Shirt Story
Pair with Spirit Bear and Children Make History. This picture book for children shares the story of Plyllis Webstad's first day at residential school. She was forced to take off her shiny orange shirt. The shirt was taken away and never returned.
Orange Shirt Day, September 30th
Pair with Spirit Bear and Children Make History. Shares Phyllis Webstad's residential school story with older children.
Fighting for a Hand to Hold: Confronting Medical Colonialism Against Indigenous Children in Canada
Pair with Spirit Bear and Children Make History. Explores systemic racism in Canadian health care in cases involving Indigenous people, children in particular, and the medical establishment's role in colonial genocide.
Structures of Indifference: An indigenous Life and Death in a Canadian City
Pair with Spirit Bear and Children Make History. Brian Sinclair, non-status Anishinaabe, arrived in the hospital emergency room where he was left unattended for 36 hours. His death shed light on systemic racism and the dehumanization of Indigenous people.
A Knapsack Full Of Dreams: Memoirs Of A Street Nurse
Pair with Vagrant. Details the life of a street nurse in Toronto and a social justice activist.
Dignity: Seeking Respect In Back Row America
Pair with Vagrant. With stark photo essays and unforgettable true stories, Chris Arnade allows those who have been left behind to define themselves on their own terms.
Travels With Lizbeth
Pair with Vagrant. A beautifully written account of one man's experience of homelessness, a story of physical survival, and the triumph of the artistic spirit in the face of enormous adversity.
The New Horse-Powered Farm: Tools And Systems For The Small-Scale, Sustainable Market Grower
Pair with Workhorse. In an era when fuel is a primary concern, draft horses are seen by many as the solution to small-scale, resilient farming with a closed-loop system. A practical manual for modernizing horse-based agriculture.
Farewell To The Horse: The Final Century Of Our Relationship
Pair with Workhorse. For millennia horses provided the strength and speed that humans lacked. Explore the ancient, profound and complex relationship between horses and humankind.
Tu Te Souviendras De Moi
Appairer avec You Will Remember Me. La pièce explore ce qui passe et ce qui reste, les traces qu’on laisse, la fugacité des choses. Au-delà de l’amnésie d’un homme, il y est question de celle d’une civilisation, la nôtre, obsédée par le présent.
The Tunnel
Pair with You Will Remember Me. A suspenseful and poignant story of a family coping with the sudden mental decline of their beloved husband and father.
The Last Ocean: A Journey Through Memory And Forgetting
Pair with You Will Remember Me. A lyrical, raw, and humane investigation of dementia that explores both the journey of the person who lives with the condition and that of their loved ones.
Vanishing Monuments
Pair with You Will Remember Me. A non-binary photographer returns home to help with their mother's dementia. Tenderly written debut exploration of what haunts us most, bearing witness to grief over not only what is lost, but also what remains.
