The Gazette Reviews: AIFF films shot in Atlantic Canada

Back in Black (2026)

By: Theodore Boyce

Back in Black is a textbook example of a movie with a fun, grabby premise that never quite manages to transcend it. The movie follows the daughter of a small-town funeral home owner, who, when her father’s business falls on hard times, tries to cause freak accidents around town to boost sales. Often funny, it unfortunately suffers from a lack of coherence — the movie is full of inexplicable and contrived set-ups for jokes and plot beats, all of which come across as lazy or confusing rather than clever or satisfying. The most baffling aspect is that the protagonist, for no obvious reason, does not speak — a cutting-edge invention that I imagine all underwritten screenplays wished they had the shamelessness to execute. It consistently fell short of the surreal ride it could be, finding a sentimental edginess that, if usually watchable, never fully becomes itself. 

Captain Newfoundland (2026)

By: Jonas May, editor-in-chief

Geoff Stirling left behind a legacy of passion, willfulness and weirdness when he passed away in 2013. The Newfoundlander was a media mogul who founded the province’s main weekly gossip magazine — which once claimed that Adolf Hitler’s gold could be found buried on Bell Island, N.L. — and its main local news broadcaster, NTV. The man who almost certainly took acid with John Lennon and helped create the acclaimed superheroes, Captain Newfoundland and Captain Canada, is the center of this documentary, which tells the province’s story from his absolutely bizarre and unique perspective. From asking the news station to turn off the evening news hour to put on Inspector Gadget, to giving sandwiches to a group who took over his radio station in Quebec, to having a weirdly buddy-cop-esque relationship with the first Newfoundland premier. This documentary is hilarious, psychedelic and showcases the best parts of the island’s history. 

Permanent Damage (2026)

By: Jacqueline Graif, assistant arts and culture editor

Permanent Damage is a Halifax-based surreal thriller directed by Seth A. Smith. The movie follows Tommy Gods’ (Calem MacDonald)  escape from prison and his past life as a fugitive. On his journey, he encounters a dementia-ridden grandma, a dab pen addict and a bat-shit crazy landlord (among others). The film is meant to be funny, but it feels strange and unsettling. Most characters die briefly, or so the audience thinks, before they come back to life in the next scene, sometimes surrounded by a considerable amount of insulation from a failed house-flip. The second half of the film centres on a relationship-altering heist for a “golden goose” —  an armadillo that poops out a valuable drug called “brown dot.” Permanent Damage is gory, unsettling and genre-distant; I struggled to tell whether it was a commentary, a thriller, a comedy, or all of that rolled into one. 

THE LAST DAYS OF APRIL (2026)

By: Mia Phillips, arts and culture editor

The Last Days of April is a documentary which orbits April Hubbard’s pending death by Medical Assistance in Dying. Yet, this isn’t necessarily a sad story. Audiences are given a multifaceted view of April in life, not just in death. We learn about her passion for the arts and circus performance, the abundance of love in her life, and public advocacy for disability rights, as well as her struggles—her declining health and financial strain caused by the cost of her care.

The documentary takes place in Halifax but includes beautiful scenes from Newfoundland and Toronto. Hubbard’s story is captivating, and the visuals are stunning. The narrative provides a well-rounded approach to the complicated and polarizing subject matter, in a deeply human way. It’s a great opportunity to understand someone else’s experience intimately and discover a new point of view regarding disability and the Canadian health care system through the story of a strikingly singular individual. 

The Snake (2026)

By: Mia Phillips, arts and culture editor

If Slayyyter is the Worst Girl in America, then Jamie (Susan Kent) from The Snake is the worst girl in Canada. We find Jamie in a state of survival. Her venomous mother has reappeared to evict her from the home her late grandmother promised would be hers. With nowhere else to go, she barks up her bum boyfriend’s tree —or van, rather — only to find that he’s only willing to take care of her sexually. Frustrated, she turns to the only person she has left to call. A Botox’d girl-boss best friend from college. A foil to Jamie’s broken-down lifestyle, the best friend seems to have it all—a husband, expensive light fixtures, and a son to send to therapy. That is until Jamie’s chaos sets up shop in their loft apartment. 

The Snake is novel in its approach to a complicated and flawed main female character. Jamie’s interactions with her mother, boyfriend and best friend’s husband Steve have the distinct nuances that only a woman’s writing could bear. This film operates as a successful ink blot test; if you hate Jamie by the end, you may need to look inward and reevaluate. 

Two Cuckolds Go Swimming (2026)

By: Mariana Luz, opinions editor

When I first saw the title of this film, I thought a movie screening at one of Canada’s biggest film festivals wasn’t going to be fetishistic. When the film’s first scenes featured unnecessary full-frontal nudity, I realized I was mistaken. The movie follows Molly Chambers (Deragh Campbell), a young porn star who returns to her small town in rural Atlantic Canada to find her ex-boyfriend (Stephen Melanson) staying in her childhood bedroom. 

Although the film captured the essence of its setting — the Newfie accents were impeccable — most of the movie was an incel’s wet dream.  I could’ve forgiven how weird the movie was or how disgusting it made me feel, but there is no excuse for the occasional VHS camera scenes. At first, I was really impressed because I thought they were acted scenes with amazing time-accurate costumes. 

But after the movie, director Winston DeGiobbi revealed those scenes were home videos of his grandfather’s from the 1970s. In them, DeGiobbi’s uncle is groping a woman who looks extremely uncomfortable. After being asked how he got consent to add those clips into the movie, he said the woman, who was his uncle’s girlfriend, had passed away. I don’t think a movie featuring a dead woman being sexually assaulted, who didn’t consent to her image being used in the film, should be getting a platform in a major Canadian film festival.