GIFF gold for Matthew Rankin, Noam Gonick

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This article was published 29/07/2025 (406 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After earning six Canadian Screen Awards earlier this year for Universal Language, filmmaker Matthew Rankin’s sunlit roadside memorial to communication and community took home top honours from the Gimli International Film Festival this past weekend.

Told in complementary tones of voice and within shades of sandstone, Universal Language received Best of Fest honours from the grand jury and also earned Rankin the Alda Award, given to “honour the cinematic and creative achievements of a filmmaker from Canada and the circumpolar nations.”

Rankin, who also acts in the film, was presented the Alda by festival founder Janis Johnson.

For her own efforts to usher the festival into existence 25 years ago, Johnson was presented by Gimli MLA Derek Johnson with the King Charles Coronation Medal at the opening reception.

Rankin is a longtime festival regular and Winnipeg Film Group student who won short film award honours in 2004 before receiving the fest’s On the Rise award for his feature debut The Twentieth Century during a pandemic-altered 2020 festival.

This year’s best Canadian short comes from writer-director Stéphanie Bélanger, who explores that unshakable era in Lumen, a French-language short with a clickable tagline for anyone who had access to e-tail during COVID-19: “A 70-year-old with a compulsive lamp-buying problem goes dark when an online seller refuses her offer.”

A modern-day victory for queer futures comes via Noam Gonick’s doc Parade: Queer Acts of Love and Resistance, which was celebrated as the best Manitoban film.

“An astonishingly cumulative look at Canada’s history of queer activism,” wrote Randall King in a Free Press dispatch from the Hot Docs opening in April. Parade was co-produced by Winnipeg’s Justine Pimlott, who shared a Peabody Award for best documentary earlier this year for Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story.

Two local actors earned ACTRA Manitoba best performance honours for their work in films dealing with loss, both at and of home.

In griePH, Winnipeg actor Kris Cahatol stars as an introverted, non-binary Filipinx who returns home for a work trip and struggles to cope with sudden loss upon arrival. Directed by MC de Natividad, the short film had its local première at this year’s FascinAsian Film Festival.

In Aberdeen, Gail Maurice soars as Kookum Aberdeen in a story of forced climate displacement along the banks of the Red River.

Maurice, a Métis filmmaker-producer from Saskatchewan, is the anchor of the debut feature-film directing collaboration between Peguis First Nation filmmaker Ryan Cooper and Walpole Island First Nation’s Eva Thomas.

Following up 2023’s audience choice award-winning positivity doc I Would Like to Thank My Body, writer-director Catherine Dulude returned with Petit Mollusque, which was named best Manitoban short. Narrated by André Vrignon-Tessier, Petite Mollusque tells a story of perinatal grief through vivid animation by Annie Castiblanco and Kaya Schulz, both paid interns through the Sisler Create program.

Shared worlds torn asunder by shared, translingual trauma are stitched together by a united vernacular of pain in Noam Shuster-Eliassi’s Coexistence, My Ass, which won the New Voices Award, sharing a potent message in a one-woman show about Israel-Palestine. Written in English, Farsi, Hebrew and Arabic, the film was written by Rachel Leah Jones and Rabab Haj Yahya.

The National Film Board of Canada write-up for Siksikakowan: The Blackfoot Man asks filmmaker Sinakson, Trevor Solway’s question in plain English: “What does it mean to be a (Native) man?” To find the answer, Solway returns to Siksika, not far from Calgary, where he confronts the early pressures to “cowboy up.” For the answer the artist provides, Solway was presented with the APTN Indigenous Spirit Award.

Ande Brown, whose short film Better Late Than Never won the best Manitoban short at 2024’s Reel Pride Film Festival, just completed his second short, First Shave. On the strength of those works, Brown won the RBC $15,000 emerging filmmaker pitch competition. The resulting feature, Half Naked, will screen next year in Gimli.

“I want to tell stories that reflect trans experiences with humour and hope,” said Brown. “If this film helps someone feel seen or brave enough to share their own story, that’s a win.”

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com