The RIDM and TV movies Canada forum return to Cannes with a sixth of Canadian documentaries
From left to right and from top to bottom: Andrea Bussmann, Banchi Hanuse, Jessica Mayhew, Jessica Johnson, Ryan Ermacora, Brett Story
The RIDM and TELEFILM Canada forum is proud to announce the selected projects for the next docs-in-Progress-Canadian Showcase at the Cannes Film Film Film market.
Presented by Cannes Docs, the documentary section of the film market, Docs-in-Progress is a pitch event presenting projects of documentary feature films at an advanced assembly stage. The Canadian Showcase, a showcase dedicated to Canadian works, gives filmmakers and producers in Canada selected, the opportunity to present their works in postproduction to an audience of international buyer, a les, a distributor, a trice · sales agent. This edition marks the sixth participation of Canada in this initiative.
In preparation, the RIDM and TELEFILM Canada forum offers pitch training and personalized support for the four selected teams, helping them prepare to draw the best part of this unique occasion and to launch their films on the international market.
The film market will take place in Cannes from May 13 to 21, 2025.
The four projects selected for Docs-in-Progress-Canadian Showcase 2025 are:
The skin of the sky
Realization and production: Andrea Bussmann
Synopsis
Skin of the Sky is a documentary test that explores the disputed areas of the border between Mexico and the United States, where human and non-human lives intertwine in control, disappearance and survival systems. Through a fragmented narration, the film retraces the often invisible journeys of horses forced to work, smuggling, spectacle and abandonment – beings taken in the same violent economies that shape human existence on the border. Navigating between clandestine hippodromes, slaughterhouses and desert patrols, the film redefines the border as a moving threshold – shaped by the power but inhabited with shadows: not said stories, body reduced to silence, and echoes of resistance.
Andrea Bussmann was born in Toronto, Canada. She has a master’s degree in social anthropology as well as a master’s degree in film production. After her studies, she realizes the one whose face gives no light. In 2016, she co -edited Tales of Two Who Dreamed, presented at first at the Berlinale Forum and winner of the Best Documentary Prize at the International Women’s Film Festival in 2017. Her Fausto feature film was presented as a world premiere in 2018 at the International Film Festival in Locarno and won the Latin Best Film Prize at the International Film Festival of Mar del Plata. The same year, she received the discovery prize from the Canadian Guild of directors.
We will eat when the river is full
Realization and production: Banchi Hanuse
Co-Scenariste: Jessica Mayhew
Synopsis
In Nuxalk Radio, a dilapidated radio station at the end of the world, an investigation into the disappearance of their sacred fish with a deeper truth about their ancestors who disappeared before them, revealing a frightening story buried in the past of Canada.
Banchi Hanuse is a producer, director and co -founder of Nuxalk Radio, a station dedicated to the survival of the Nuxalk language. She produced the short documentary films Cry Rock (2010) and Nuxalk Radio (2020), as well as the feature film Aitamaako’Tamiskapi Natosi: Before the Sun (2023). She continues to make indigenous voices heard and campaign for cultural and environmental safeguard.
Jessica Mayhew holds a law diploma and a baccalaureate in scene arts. She combines her legal training with her passion for the story in order to develop a singular understanding of the issues affecting indigenous peoples. Through her work, she undertakes to tell real stories, to deconstruct myths and to highlight the indigenous voices.
Concrete transformed into sand
Realization and production: Jessica Johnson and Ryan Ermacora
Synopsis
Following a collective of cultivators · sitters on Cortes Island, in British Columbia, Concretes Turned to Sand traces the evolution of the inter-lab area subject to the effects of warming and acidification of the oceans. Through different perceptions and scales, the film reveals a landscape in transformation and the means of subsistence which are closely linked to it.
Jessica Johnson and Ryan Ermacora are award-winning filmmakers based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Their films explore the ways in which human beings have left their mark on the biosphere. On the formal level, their work is defined by a structural approach to the realization, engaging in the perspective of cinema while illustrating the experience of work in dialogue with the landscape. Their works were presented at festivals and cinemas such as Cinema in reality, the Walker Art Center, the New Cinema Festival, the Open City Documentary Festival, the Kassel Dokfest and the VIFF.
World production
Realization and production: Brett Story
Synopsis
The production of the world is an archive film on artists and activists from the 1950s caught in the nets of cultural war. Both a spy thriller on the infiltration of the art world by the CIA and the captivating biography of the writer John Berger – a central figure in our way of decoding the images – The Production of the World offers a most relevant archive survey on the cultural battlefields of the time. An enigmatic and prolific personality, John Berger guides the spectator through this period, asking the most disturbing and controversial question of the film: what is the value of art in time of political turbulence?
Brett Story is a award -winning filmmaker and author whose work repels the formal boundaries of political cinema. His films were presented in international rooms and festivals, notably in Sundance, CPH: Dox and Sxsw. She is the director of the Union feature films (with Steve Maing), selected in the Oscar Shortlist, the prison in Twelve Landscapes and The Hottest August. She is also the author of the prison Land book: cartography of prison power across neoliberal America. She was nominated for the Cinema Eye Award in the Best production category in 2020 and 2025, and is a winner of Chicken & Egg Award, a Spendese scholarship and a Guggenheim scholarship.
About Téléfilm Canada
As a partner of choice, TV film Canada is a state -owned company dedicated to the success of the Canadian audiovisual industry, which promotes access and excellence by offering programs that support cultural resonance and public commitment. TV movie supports dynamic companies and creative talents in the country and in the world, always defining its objectives of equity, inclusion and sustainability. In addition, it makes recommendations to the Canadian Ministry of Heritage concerning the certification of audiovisual co -productions governed by treaties, and it administers the Programs of the Canada Media Fund. Launched in 2012, the Talent Fund accepts private donations which are mainly used to support emerging talents. Website | X | Facebook | Instagram
About the RIDM Forum
The RIDM Forum aims to stimulate the national and international production and dissemination of independent documentaries, notably by promoting the exchange of information and the meetings between the different players in the documentary sector. Round tables, conferences and workshops around major major issues bring together more than 500 filmmakers and representatives of several production, television and distribution companies for six days.
The 21st edition of the RIDM Forum will be held from November 21 to 26, 2025.
Informations : ridm.ca/fr/forum-ridm / [email protected]
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