2023 Festival Film Schedule
Lineas de Sangre
Reclaiming connection to bloodlines through the guidance of plant and land ancestors on Dakota and Anishinaabe land, Mni Sota Makoce...
Freshwater
Freshwater is a documentary that dives into the cold waters of Lake Superior along Minnesota's North Shore....
Ugoku Tokai - Moving City
Life is movement. The highest concentration of movement is the city. A melancholy-looking young man in a business suit goes on an adventure into his own city...
Northern Nights, Starry Skies
Our star-bright northern skies are beckoning. The region has an extraordinary number of places where night skies are dark enough to be experienced in their full splendor...
Underdog
Doug Butler is a hardscrabble Vermont dairy farmer with an offbeat passion—dog mushing...
Opening Ceremony
After Antarctica
After Antarctica follows polar explorer Will Steger’s life journey as an eyewitness to the greatest changes in the polar regions of our planet...
The Hand That Feeds + La Nueva (short)
Russel, mid thirties, has wasted his whole life. Devoid of purpose or ambition, all he has to claim as his own, is the bar left to him by his father...
Spirit of the Peaks
“Spirit of the Peaks” is a film about the struggle for balance between two worlds...
Trusted Messenger
As 2022 unfolds, the world still grapples with COVID-19 and herd immunity eludes us, with widespread vaccine hesitancy posing a huge obstacle...
Bring Her Home
Bring Her Home follows three Indigenous women – an artist, an activist, and a politician – as they fight to vindicate and honor their missing and murdered relatives...
Waiting on Walleye + Watching the Wilds (short)
After two years, Nick finally has an opportunity to return to his roots in Northern Minnesota to reunite with friends and fish for Walleye...
On Guard - A Story of American Youth
On Guard is a coming of age story as told through the eyes of five teenage women of color growing
up in an era unlike any other...
State of the Unity
Is unity possible? This simple question launched the Brooklyn-based band The Bergamot on a quest to all 50 States to unite people with music, community, and collaboration...
Valentine Crush
A roller derby woman gets in a little over her head when she meets her number one fan...
Glob Lessons
While performing two-person low-budget children’s theatre out of a minivan across the frozen Upper Midwest, two aimless thirtysomething strangers...
After the Gunflint
On a family fishing trip deep in the woods, Grandpa has a heart attack, leaving his son-in-law and granddaughter to find their own way out while trying to keep Grandpa alive...
Cup Confidential
A true story about how a scrappy, semi-pro hockey team won the hearts of the blue-collar city they represented...
Workshop: "Making Movies in the Northland"
Presented by the Upper Midwest Film Office
Land of My Father
A Korean farmer protests the Japanese government in Tokyo over its claims of the disputed island territory of Dokdo after he finds out...
Musher
Musher peels back the veil behind the bond that four women have between their dogs and the world of sled-dog racing...
Workshop - "Northland Stories: Resources for New & Emerging Filmmakers in Our Community"
Presented by Minnesota Media Arts School & Minnesota Film Festival
The Race To Alaska
The Race to Alaska is an adrenaline-fueled, 750-mile boat race through the dangerous and spectacular wilderness of the Inside Passage to Alaska...
Female Dragon Tamers
Portrait of a group of women breast cancer survivors who row as a form of physical and emotional recovery. Everything is going well until the goal of the group changes for some members...
Beyond The Northwoods
An obnoxious content creator is guided through a small town's woods to make a video about several unsolved disappearances...
The Marshmallow Mystery Tour
After landing a gig at a marshmallow theme park, a cameraman uncovers the shocking truth about America's candy industry and his own sugarcoated childhood...
Sanctified
An outlaw is rescued from death by a nun who is traveling through the Badlands...
Iron Opera + Bellysaurus (short)
It’s not easy to stage an opera in the middle of northern Minnesota, but this is the Iron Range where the people are stubborn and the music of the Old World still runs deep in their veins...
After Antarctica
After Antarctica follows polar explorer Will Steger’s life journey as an eyewitness to the greatest changes in the polar regions of our planet...
The Butterfly Effect
People making a difference for monarchs, one milkweed at a time...
Minnesota Tiger Man
Minnesota Tiger Man is the story of Grant Oly, a man who starts a Siberian tiger habitat in his own yard after taking in a tiger cub from a local...
Daughter of a Lost Bird
DAUGHTER OF A LOST BIRD follows Kendra, an adult Native adoptee, as she reconnects with her birth family, discovers her Lummi heritage, and confronts issues of her own identity...