Through the eyes of ex-engineer, now filmmaker Gillian McKercher, Orphaned explores the huge task of cleaning up thousands of idle oil and gas wells in the prairies before it's too late.
Related Movies
Make Mine Service (1952)
Training and Customer Service information film sponsored by the Marketing Retail Sales Department of the Standard Oil Company. Features product placement for brands like Atlas and Chevron.
Shameless Propaganda (2013)
This feature documentary examines its own genre, which has often been called Canada's national art form. Released in the year of the NFB's 75th birthday, Shameless Propaganda is filmmaker Robert Lower's take on the boldest and most compelling propaganda effort in our history (1939-1945), in which founding NFB Commissioner John Grierson saw the documentary as a "hammer to shape society". All 500 of the films produced by the NFB until 1945 are distilled here for the essence of their message to Canadians. Using only these films and still photos from that era, Lower recreates the picture of Canada they gave us and looks in it for the Canada we know today. What he finds is by turns enlightening, entertaining, and unexpectedly disturbing.
Oil Springs (2025)
The story will mostly take place in the town Oil Springs, Ontario, where the oil industry in North America was born. By making a case study of this town, we can better understand how the industry operates today. The documentary will explore themes of colonialism, climate change and Canadian identity.
The Fence (2020)
Two thousand Canadians suffered the longest incarceration anywhere in the Second World War, a bitter four-year period inside Japanese POW camps in Hong Kong and Japan.
We The North: From Prehistoric to Historic (2025)
A basketball team born out of an egg, in a hockey-crazed city, playing in a baseball stadium, fights for survival and ultimately conquers a nation and the league. This documentary offers an in-depth look at how a fledgling franchise transformed into a cultural phenomenon, uniting communities and reshaping Canada's identity.
Inbound (2025)
Documenting the shared trajectory between Canada’s rise as a global basketball powerhouse and the circumstances that helped shape the country’s multicultural identity.
Northlore (2025)
Weaving animation and live action, Northlore delves into the transformational stories of people living in Canada’s North and their deep connection to the land and its wildlife.
Thank You for the Rain (2017)
Five years ago Kisilu, a Kenyan farmer, started to use his camera to capture the life of his family, his village and the damages of climate change. When a violent storm throws him and a Norwegian filmmaker together we see him transform from a father, to a community leader and activist on the global stage.
An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
A documentary on Al Gore's campaign to make the issue of global warming a recognized problem worldwide.
Nanook of the North (1922)
This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.
Another Side of the Forest (1974)
Developments in the Canadian forestry industry during the 1970s are shown being carried out both as lab experiments and in the field to protect and conserve the country's vast forests. These include turning a Newfoundland bog into woodland, fostering British Columbia seedlings that withstand mechanical planting, inoculating Ontario elms against the bark beetle, devising ways of controlling fire, and more.
Watershed: Exploring a New Water Ethic for the New West (2012)
As the most dammed, dibbed, and diverted river in the world struggles to support thirty million people and the peace-keeping agreement known as the Colorado River Pact reaches its limits, WATERSHED introduces hope. Can we meet the needs of a growing population in the face of rising temperatures and lower rainfall in an already arid land? Can we find harmony amongst the competing interests of cities, agriculture, industry, recreation, wildlife, and indigenous communities with rights to the water? Sweeping through seven U.S. and two Mexican states, the Colorado River is a lifeline to expanding populations and booming urban centers that demand water for drinking, sanitation and energy generation. And with 70% of the rivers’ water supporting agriculture, the river already runs dry before it reaches its natural end at the Gulf of California. Unless action is taken, the river will continue its retreat – a potentially catastrophic scenario for the millions who depend on it.
The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream (2004)
Since World War II North Americans have invested much of their newfound wealth in suburbia. It has promised a sense of space, affordability, family life and upward mobility. As the population of suburban sprawl has exploded in the past 50 years Suburbia, and all it promises, has become the American Dream. But as we enter the 21st century, serious questions are beginning to emerge...
Beyond Kicks (1972)
In the early 1970s, a group of young volunteers, the Free Youth Clinic of Winnipeg, operated a "crisis bus" to rescue young people experiencing bad drug trips, usually from LSD.
Atomic Homefront (2017)
Revealing St. Louis, Missouri's atomic past as a uranium processing center for the atomic bomb and the governmental and corporate negligence that lead to the illegal dumping of Manhattan Project radioactive waste throughout North County neighborhoods.
Pump (2014)
PUMP is a documentary that tells the story of America’s addiction to oil, from its corporate conspiracy beginnings to its current monopoly today, and explains clearly and simply how we can end it — and finally win choice at the pump. Today, oil is our only option for transportation-fuel at the pump. Our exclusive use of it has drained our wallets, increased air pollution and sent our sons and daughters to war in faraway lands. PUMP shows how, through the use of a variety of replacement fuels, we will be able to fill up our cars — cheaper, cleaner and American made — and in the process create more jobs for a stronger, healthier economy. Narrated by Jason Bateman and featuring notable experts such as John Hofmeister former President of Shell Oil, and Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors, PUMP will forever change the way you think about your car — and the fuel that powers it.
Martha of the North (2009)
In the mid-1950s, lured by false promises of a better life, Inuit families were displaced by the Canadian government and left to their own devices in the Far North. In this icy desert realm, Martha Flaherty and her family lived through one of Canadian history’s most sombre and little-known episodes.
Mike on the Farm (2022)
89-year-old Italian immigrant Mike Nardone operates a farm all by himself in Alberta, Canada.
King Coal (2023)
The cultural roots of coal continue to permeate the rituals of daily life in Appalachia even as its economic power wanes. The journey of a coal miner’s daughter exploring the region’s dreams and myths, untangling the pain and beauty, as her community sits on the brink of massive change.