Published on January 8, 2026
Newcomer Stories Show Connections Across Cultures in This Must-See Festival of Shorts
Moving to a new country has no shortage of challenges. One of the quieter ones is wondering if your new home’s cultural institutions can tell your stories too.
“We always want to be a welcoming theatre,” begins Ben Sures, a Professional Programming Presenter with the City. “Sometimes you wonder, why aren't we seeing some demographics of people coming to us, and what can we do about that?”
So Sures and a colleague have created A Fresh Lens, a festival of short films that doubles as a chance to connect a newcomer audience with the Arden. It’s a suite of National Film Board shorts, selected by panels of recent and not-so-recent immigrants to Canada. The panels included those who hail from Syria, Brazil, Mexico and various countries in Africa but who now call St. Albert and surrounding area home.
Still shot from Ice Breakers, one of the short films playing at A Fresh Lens on Jan. 24, 2026.
The 13 shorts chosen—ranging from under two minutes to just over fifteen—cover a wide array of topics, from representation in the performing arts to celebrating the overlooked history of pioneering Black hockey players in Canada. One film, Sounds & Pressure: Roy and Yvonne, tells the story of two Jamaican ska legends who’d recorded together in the ‘60s before going their separate ways. Decades later, they reunite in Scarborough, Ontario, reflecting on their well-earned piece of musical legacy.
Sounds & Pressure’s filmmakers Graeme Mathieson and Chris Flanagan note that stories like this often disappear if not sought out and given their proper dues.
“I think we were both surprised that no one had made docs about these legends before,” Mathieson explains. “There's all sorts of docs about other Canadian music pioneers, and these people are equally important as any of their sixties, seventies, eighties counterparts. … it's incredibly important oral history that these veterans and pioneers are just holding in their minds.”
Mathieson acknowledges that one hurdle they faced is convincing the artists themselves that certain archival pieces of history had relevance beyond the personal.
Still shot from Sounds & Pressure: Roy and Yvonne, one of the short films playing at A Fresh Lens on Jan. 24, 2026.
“What they think is a value for anyone else to hear—that was one of our challenges with archives: it wasn't really well documented,” he says. “It was trying to find personal archives, but a lot of people just thought, ‘these are just pictures, or stuff I collected or held onto.’ And to us it's a visual reference of these really special moments in time.
“Even with Roy and Yvonne, they're just pretty nonchalant about it,” Mathieson continues. “That was just what they did: he was a singer and it was what it was, and here's some video you've seen before of me on a Ska special back in the sixties. And we were just like, ‘But what was it like in the venues?’”
To Sures, the wide range of films chosen for A Fresh Lens shows how even deeply specific stories can resonate across cultures.
Still shot from Boat People, one of the short films playing at A Fresh Lens on Jan. 24, 2026.
“Some of the people from various countries really related to the Nakota language film [To Wake Up The Nakota Language], because it was about preserving language, and losing language, and that's a big theme when you go to a new country or a new continent,” he says. “It was interesting to see that uniquely Canadian, First Nations experience being something that resonated with someone from, say, Syria.”
Audiences will get a chance to hear from the panels about their film choices too: some of the panel members will be present for a Q+A after the screening to discuss their choices.
Sures also notes that the panels selected one piece of truly quintessential Canadiana.
“It's fun that one of the films they chose was The Log Driver's Waltz,” Sures says.
A Fresh Lens: National Film Board Festival of Shorts plays at The Arden Theatre on Saturday, January 24, 2026 at 7:30 p.m. Learn more about this event
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Last edited: January 8, 2026