How to Lose Everything

"A Field Guide" is a watercolour and in-camera animation that gives instructions on survival for the uninitiated, and companionship for those who know the terrain of heartache and loss.

"A Bear Named Jesus" is a stop-motion film. At Archer's Aunty Gladys's funeral, he hears a tap on the window — it's a bear named Jesus, who has come for Archer's mom. "A Bear Named Jesus" is an allegory for religious interference, with an aching yet humorous look at estrangement and mourning for the loss of someone still living.

"Heart Like a Pow Wow" is an animated short which explores the depths of grief from an Anishinaabe perspective of love and family. Viewers are called to witness Spirit as they shift to physical form while embodying the love that precedes grief and inevitably foreshadows it.

"There Are Hierarchies of Grief" reflects on the wisdom and strength of bereaved mothers, as he is faced with the grief of waking up to a changed world — but also with the comfort of the people, memories and emotions left like gifts for those left behind.

In "Grape Soda in the Parking Lot", animated in oil pastel paintings, Taqralik Partridge asks what if every language that had been lost to English — every word, every syllable — grew up out of the ground in flowers? Taqralik's grandmother's Scottish Gaelic and her father's Inuktitut unfold in memories of her family, of pain, and of love.