Mushroom film festival growing

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This article was published 27/02/2025 (394 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Mushrooms were an acquired taste for Tom Nagy.

As a picky kid in Hamilton, he nudged them to the rim of his dinner plate, but you could say they grew on him when, in his early 20s, Nagy asked his barista brother to bring home a bag of coffee grounds when he heard he could plant his own mycological garden in a five-gallon bucket stuffed with soggy arabica — a second use for yesterday’s Second Cup.

He tightened the lid, and within days, the earthy brown was covered by a sheet of white fuzz that would soon become Pleurotus ostreatus. Ever since, the world has been his oyster (mushroom).

Seven years ago, after moving to Winnipeg, where he worked as a craft brewer at Barnhammer, Nagy’s growing passion spawned River City Mushrooms, a business focused on advocacy and education in the field of fungal ecology.

By 2023, Nagy — who has an educational background in restoration ecology — allowed mushrooms to take over his life, quitting his brewery gig to turn enoki, shiitake and morels into his full-time job.

Having found in Nagy a suitable host, the fungi have spread.

“It has definitely touched most aspects of my life. I’ve got mushroom artwork all over the place. Mugs, doodles, posters, prints. I’m a relatively easy person to shop for. I’ve subscribed to mushrooms being an integral part of my self-identity,” says Nagy, 33.

In a four-by-four-foot production space at his home, he cultivates mushrooms to be sold at farmers markets and to local restaurants, including Clementine, an Exchange District breakfast staple that takes 15 pounds of mixed oyster mushrooms off Nagy’s hands every two weeks.

The production side of his business is expected to expand this summer, he says.

Since moving to Winnipeg, Nagy says he’s developed connections with hundreds of local mycophiles, and in an attempt to centralize the fungal community, he’s become the Manitoban licensee for the Fungi Film Fest, which, since its founding three years ago, has billed itself as “the world’s only short film festival dedicated to the beauty, otherworldliness and human influences of mushrooms, lichens and micro fungi.”

The festival is Sunday at the Park Theatre — some nutritional counter-programming to that evening’s Academy Awards broadcast.

With 20 short films from 17 countries, the festival lineup reflects the immense global influence, variety and visual appeal of its subject matter.

Mexican directors Alexa Angeles and Carolina Revilla’s Amanita uses lively, felted animation to tell the story of three fungal creatures — with soft human features — who serve the beast who lives inside a giant oak tree.

Ger Killeen’s American production, Mystery of the Forest, follows an Indigenous Mexican healer who sings a song of praise for the mushrooms used in her practice.

French filmmaker Francesa Barbieri’s entry asks what would happen If Camembert Were To Disappear Too…, while Argentinian director Angel Salazar’s Visions of the Fungicene anticipates a bold future where AI and fungal patterns merge to offer “a glimpse into the pluriverses beyond our time.”

The sole domestic contribution is a Canadian-Spanish music video called Psilocybin, directed by Alvaro Giraldo Mesones, which follows its protagonist’s desert trip, where, per the description, he “has an encounter with the death itself muajajaaa.”

After the film program, Nagy will be joined by foraging expert David Beer of Wildland Foods and author-poet Ariel Gordon (also a Free Press copy editor) for a wide-ranging panel discussion on the fascinating worlds of mycelia. You don’t have to be a fungi obsessive to enjoy the evening, Nagy promises.

Less picky in adulthood, he now believes mushrooms are an important part of a balanced cultural diet.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com.ca