In celebration of Asian Heritage Month 2023, the North Vancouver City Library is offering a free screening of three National Film Board short documentaries exploring the diverse cultures and histories of Asian communities in Canada:

Highway to Heaven (2019 | 16 minutes)

This short symphonic documentary offers a glimpse into the unique religious co-existence found along No. 5 Road in Richmond, BC. Highway to Heaven takes audiences into many of the temples, mosques, and churches that call No. 5 home, revealing unity despite difference across these diverse cultural spaces. In a world struggling with religious violence and intolerance, filmmaker Sandra Ignagni has crafted a gentle portrait of a rare landscape using attentive imagery and an acoustic tapestry of prayer.

Jia (2020 | 10 minutes)

A young Chinese-Canadian couple is visiting family in Wuhan, epicentre of the virus, at the very moment the pandemic is declared. Interviewing his subjects in a novel socially distanced mode, director Weiye Su explores the culturally specific concept of Jia — an idea evoking family or home that acquires sharp new meaning during COVID times.

Angel Peacock (2019 | 24 minutes)

Dawod is a 12 year old Yazidi boy. The Yazidi are a small Kurdish-speaking sect from northern Iraq that dates back to Mesopotamian times and who have been persecuted for almost as long. ISIS has been waging a campaign of genocide against them since 2014. Over 10,000 men have been killed. Thousands of women kidnapped, raped and trafficked. The survivors are in camps in Kurdistan and a lucky few have been brought to Germany and Canada. Dawod and his mother Naro were held captive by ISIS for months. They managed to escape by running through forests for 9 days and nights without food or water. They made it to one of the refugee camps and from there to Canada, arriving in London, Ontario in January 2018. This is the story of Dawod’s arrival in and introduction to his new homeland and way of life.

For more info, visit the organiser’s website: https://www.nvcl.ca/events/asian-heritage-month-documentary-screenings