Vancouver’s DOXA Documentary Film Festival (May 2–12) will feature extraordinary stories from across Canada with a selection of five deeply personal National Film Board of Canada (NFB) produced and co-produced documentaries.

Winnipeg directors Natalie Baird and Toby Gillies’ Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying makes its world premiere at DOXA. In this animated short doc, Edith Almadi’s imagination transcends grief, revealing a vibrant world of art where love endures.

The festival’s Closing Night film will be BC premiere Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story (Banger Films/NFB) by Toronto directors Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee. A lost R&B star who eclipsed Etta James and Little Richard, trans soul singer Jackie Shane blazed an extraordinary trail. Forty years after vanishing from public view, this 20th-century icon finally gets her second act.

DOXA will feature the North American premiere of the immersive documentary fable A Man Imagined by Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky, an intimate and hallucinatory portrait of a man with schizophrenia.

There are also two more BC premieres:

In Montreal director Eisha Marjara’s short doc Am I the skinniest person you’ve ever seen? (Compass Productions/9466-7565 Québec/NFB), dieting together seems like fun for two sisters—until their project takes a dark turn.

The hybrid feature doc Wilfred Buck (Door Number 3 Productions/NFB) by Toronto-based Anishinaabe filmmaker Lisa Jackson follows the journey of charismatic and irreverent Cree Elder Wilfred Buck, who overcomes a harrowing history to reclaim ancestral star knowledge and ceremony.