Our memories shape who we are as individuals and as a society. Some remain with us, others slip away, while some become embedded in the stories we choose to preserve and pass on. From the intimate to the collective, this program explores the many facets of a human capacity we too often take for granted. Rooted in tradition, Keep Traditional Knowledge Alive highlights the importance of transmitting knowledge and skills in order to sustain Indigenous cultures and identities. Drawing on the very mechanisms of memory, Angle mort addresses aphantasia, a condition that challenges our relationship to mental imagery and recollection. In Stefi, the boundaries between past, present, and future begin to blur as dementia gradually takes hold of everyday life. The Last Harvest explores memory and nostalgia among migrants seeking to build new roots in an urban environment. With My Father, memory becomes an act of tribute, questioning what remains of a loved one through archives and photographs that sustain a sense of presence. Then there are the memories that haunt us — those we wish we could erase. In Después del silencio, memory intersects with trauma, and testimony becomes the first step toward liberation. In a similar spirit of reclaiming power, reXistence underscores the necessity of struggle and activism, exposing the media mechanisms that contribute to obscuring racism and police violence in Quebec. Where the past continues to shape the present, these films move between what stays with us and what fades away, revealing how memory, fragile and powerful, anchors our struggles and guides our vision of the future.

* Screened as part of a double feature with the Migrations program