The Kingston Canadian Film Festival is the largest festival in the world dedicated exclusively to Canadian film. From Mar. 3-13, 2022, join KCFF at the theatre or stream films at home!
We've picked out films and books that pair well with the films in the KCFF lineup to make your festival experience that much better. The links will take you to all of the formats we have available.
The Age of Hope by David Bergen
Pairs with All My Puny Sorrows. Heavily influenced by their Mennonite upbringings, David Bergen and Miriam Toews write thoughtful, and thought-provoking, novels that examine the complicated inner lives of complex characters.
Everything Here is Beautiful by Mira Lee
Pairs with All My Puny Sorrows. Examines the dynamics between sisters when one is dealing with a mental illness and offers a moving portrait of sisterly love.
The Last Time We Say Goodbye by Cynthia Hand
Pairs with All My Puny Sorrows. Both emotionally intense novels explore complex family relations, similar themes and storylines. While Sorrows is written for an adult audience, Goodbye is aimed at young adult readers.
A Long Way Down (film)
Pairs with All My Puny Sorrows. Both of these character-driven works feature troubled characters who contemplate suicide as a solution to difficult life challenges.
Me Before You (film)
Pairs with All My Puny Sorrows. Unlike Sorrows, Me Before You provides a heartbreakingly romantic spin on a serious theme: assisted suicide.
Annabel by Kathleen Winter
Pairs with Dawn, Her Dad & The Tractor. Similar to Dawn, Annabel features a main character struggling with their identity growing up in a small East-coast Canadian town.
If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo
Pairs with Dawn, Her Dad & The Tractor. Each of these works feature emotionally intense, character-driven stories on issues facing young transgender people, and those who love them.
Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead
Pairs with Dawn, Her Dad & The Tractor. Like Dawn, Jonny follows a Canadian LGBTQ+ character as they return to their former life to attend the funeral of a parent. Jonny is a two-spirit Indigiqueer young man, while Dawn is a young trans woman.
Perfect Peace by Daniel Black
Pairs with Dawn, Her Dad & The Tractor. Dawn is set in the Maritimes, while Perfect is set in Arkansas, but they both explore similar themes of sexual identity and gender roles, effects on the protagonist and their family, and the influence of small-town life.
The Pearl: Transgender Women Coming Out in their Senior Years (film)
Pairs with Dawn, Her Dad & The Tractor. This intimate documentary profiles four transgender women that come out for the first time in their senior years and their journey towards acceptance.
Saturday Church (film)
Pairs with Dawn, Her Dad & The Tractor. Both films feature young transgender characters played by actual transgender people. Although both fall into the drama genre, Church adds an element of music and fantasy. Also available on Kanopy.
Pieds Nus Dans L'aube by Felix Leclerc
Pairs with L'Arraceuse de temps. A novel of memories that takes place in a closed world, La Tuque, reminiscent of French-Canadian society before the Second World War
Beneath The Raven Moon by David Bouchard and Andy Everson
Pairs with L'Arraceuse de temps. An enchanting tale of the creation of Grandmother Moon and of the first time she wove her spell on a young, unsuspecting couple.
To Speak for the Trees, My Life's Journey From Ancient Celtic Wisdom To A Healing Vision Of The Forest by Diana Beresford-Kroeger
Pairs with L'Arraceuse de temps. This book is not only the story of a remarkable scientist and her ideas, it harvests all of her powerful knowledge about why trees are a viable, achievable solution to climate change
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by Victoria Schwab
Pairs with L'Arraceuse de temps. France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever - and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets
Danse Macabre: Close Encounters With The Reaper by Nancy Kilpatrick
Pairs with L'Arraceuse de temps. A collection of 26 literary reflections that embody the themed, classical artwork devoted to the spectrum of humanity's intriguing interactions with the Angel of Death in all his/her/its manifestations.
Babine (film)
Pairs with L'Arraceuse de temps. The story of a man named Babine and his fellow villagers, living in a world where oxen can fall in love and a clock can grow from where a pocket watch is sown.
Adventures of Rufus: The Fantastic Pet (film)
Pairs with L'Arraceuse de temps. While staying at his grandmother's mysterious mansion, friends Scott and Emily must team up with an eccentric wizard and an adorable talking creature named Rufus in order to defeat an evil sorceress.
Éva Bouchard: la légende de Maria Chapdelaine by Marcelle R. Fortin
Pairs with Maria Chapdelaine. Éva Bouchard was the sister of Laura Bedard, who was thought to be the inspiration for the title character of Louis Hémon’s 1914 novel Maria Chapdelaine.
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
Pairs with Maria Chapdelaine. In Nebraska in the early 1900s, Alexandra Bergson inherits the family farmland on the death of her father, and she devotes her life to making the farm a viable enterprise at a time when many other immigrant families are giving up and leaving the prairie.
Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
Pairs with Maria Chapdelaine. A passionate tale of one young woman's quest to save her lover set against the chaos of the 1849 California Gold Rush.
Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey
Pairs with Maria Chapdelaine. In a post-apocalyptic American West, a caravan of travelling librarians deliver Approved Materials to isolated towns and outposts. They are also unwittingly delivering Esther, who ran away from home to escape an arranged marriage.
The Dazzle of Day by Molly Gloss
Pairs with Maria Chapdelaine. Interstellar pioneers leave a ravaged Earth in a generation ship in search of a new home. A story of generations intermarrying, getting along, fighting, and resolving differences in the Quaker way.
Captain Fantastic (film)
Pairs with Maria Chapdelaine. Former left-wing anarchist activists Ben and Leslie live an isolated existence with their six children in the Washington wilderness.
Tanna (film)
Pairs with Maria Chapdelaine. On the island of Tanna in the South Pacific, Dain and Wawa run away to the wilderness to escape the marriage Wawa's family has arranged for her. Tanna was the first film to be shot entirely on location in Vanuatu, and most of the cast played their own roles in the film. Also available on Kanopy.
Wild (film)
Pairs with Maria Chapdelaine. A chronicle of one woman's 1,100-mile solo hike undertaken as a way to recover from a recent catastrophe. Based on Cheryl Strayed's 2012 memoir of the same name.
Sumac: recipes and stories from Syria by Anas Atassi
Pairs with Peace By Chocolate. Recipes and stories of Syria inspired by memories, travel and family.
Man @ the_airport by Hassan Al Kontar
Pairs with Peace By Chocolate. The story of one’s man’s quest to find asylum using the power of social media, ultimately finding a home in Canada.
Reaching Mithymna by Steven Heighton
Pairs with Peace By Chocolate. Local author, Steven Heighton, recounts his time spent in a refugee camp for Syrians on the Greek island of Lesvos.
No Land to Light On by Yara Zgheib
Pairs with Peace By Chocolate. A young and in-love couple awaiting the birth of their first child, have to face separation as Hadi is detained upon re-entry to the United States.
Salam (film)
Pairs with Peace By Chocolate. A Lyft driver in NYC works and waits for word of her family after a bombing in Syria.
Humanity Last: Refugees Still Hope (film)
Pairs with Peace By Chocolate. A documentary highlighting the trials, tribulations and hope of refugees trying to get to Great Britain.
A Map to the Sun by Sloane Leong
Pairs with Sleeping Warrior. Leong makes an ensemble of struggling teens shine in this uplifting and visually explosive graphic novel, centred around two high school friends who are recruited for the underfunded school’s first girls’ basketball team.
The Role I Played: Canada’s Greatest Olympic Hockey Team by Sami J Small
Pairs with Sleeping Warrior. The Canadian and American women's Olympic hockey teams are powerhouses, consistently making it to every final and battling each other for the gold. Canadian goalie Small provides a look at some of those battles.
Hail Mary: the Rise and Fall of the National Women's Football League by Britni De la Cretaz and Lyndsey D'Arcangelo
Pairs with Sleeping Warrior. An intriguing history of the 1974–88 National Women's Football League (NWFL) by journalists de la Cretaz and D'Arcangelo, both of whom primarily write about the intersection of sports and gender.
A League of Their Own (film)
Pairs with Sleeping Warrior. Fictionalized account of the real-life All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, active from 1943 to 1954 when World War II threatened to shut down Major League Baseball.
Bend It Like Beckham (film)
Pairs with Sleeping Warrior. 18-year-old Londoner Jasminder "Jess" Bhamra, the daughter of British Indian Sikhs, is recruited for a local women's amateur team, but when her parents forbid her to play - fearing she'll be the victim of Anti-Indian prejudice - she goes behind their backs.
Offside (film)
Pairs with Sleeping Warrior. Iranian film about several girls who are detained while trying to watch a World Cup qualifying match at a stadium in Tehran. Shot in Iran, its screening was banned there.
Purdah: Young Women in India Fighting to Pursue Their Dreams (film)
Pairs with Sleeping Warrior. The inspiring documentary about a young Indian woman who trades her burka for dreams of playing on the Mumbai Senior Women's Cricket Team.
Khartoum Offside (film)
Pairs with Sleeping Warrior. Documentary following the daily lives of four young women out to both play professional football, in defiance of a ban imposed by the Sudanese Islamist military government, and to lobby for money to fund a national women's team.
Queen of Katwe (film)
Pairs with Sleeping Warrior. Film depicting the life of Phiona Mutesi, a girl living from Katwe, a slum in Kampala, Uganda. She learns to play chess and becomes a Woman Candidate Master after her victories at World Chess Olympiads.
