For its casting of non-professional actors within a mostly scripted narrative, Antoine Bourges’ latest feature, Concrete Valley, has already been called a docu-fiction “hybrid.” Set in the East Toronto neighbourhood of Thorncliffe Park, an initial an initial landing spot for new Canadian immigrants, the film centres on Rashid (Hussam Douhna), a former physician from Syria, who settles there with his wife, Farah (Amani Ibrahim), and their young son Ammar (Abdullah Nadaf). Apart from Ibrahim, who in the film plays a former actor, everyone who appears in Concrete Valley is an amateur performer.

By Michael Vass When Paris-born filmmaker Antoine Bourges moved from Montréal to Vancouver in 2006, he ended up living and working near the infamous Downtown Eastside neighbourhood. This led Bourges to make a pair of films in the community with its residents: the short Woman Waiting (2010), and the medium-length 2012 feature East Hastings Pharmacy,…

By Aliza Ma The windows were all shaded and the sunlight could no more penetrate these dark rooms than the unanticipated image of a different landscape.—Paul Virilio “More than anything else, it’s about duration,” Images Festival programmer Kate MacKay pronounced jubilantly as we found ourselves hurtling towards April 12th, the opening of the festival’s 2012…