Nickel Independent Film Festival 2026

Saturday at the Nickel! Four events today, all at the LSPU Hall: 1:00pm — Making Your First "Real Money" Short Film. A free workshop with Michael Peers and Yasmine Majchrzak, fresh off their JETS Initiative win at Berlinale, on what the jump from a friends-with-a-camera short to a properly-resourced one actually looks like. LSPU Cox & Palmer Second Space. No registration required. 2:30pm — People's History. Documentary shorts on politics, memory, language, caregiving, survival. NL politician Lorraine Michael, a francophone storyteller on the Port-au-Port, an Inuk artist receiving traditional tuniit, a Gaza fishing doc, a quiet father-son portrait at a Gaspésie motel. LSPU Hall. 5:30pm — In Conversation: Growing Local On-Screen Comedy. Dana Puddicombe and Mike Fardy with host Matt Wright. Free. LSPU Cox & Palmer Second Space. 7:00pm — Hope After All. Short films about finding human connection in surprising places. A photographer's cross-generational NL friendship, two welders watching something impossible in the sky, two women bonding at an Indian restaurant in Paris, an investigation of Vietnamese refugees who became extras in Apocalypse Now. LSPU Hall. For screening tickets visit the box office or nickelfestival.com

Yesterday's Page to Performance Film Lab presented by @ruthlesslawless was such a blast! Thanks to everyone for coming out and putting work on its feet.

These three lovely short films—“S’ils sont pas morts ils sont encore vivants (If they haven’t died, they’re still alive)”, “The Lines She Carries,” & “Lorraine”—screen at 2:30pm on Saturday, June 27 at the 2026 @nickelfestival as part of the program “PEOPLE’S HISTORY.”

Sunday at the Nickel Film Fest offers a collection of piece from Labrador, largely created from the ground up by students. It gives them a fresh, enjoyably unhinged vibe. The power of place and community are everywhere, sometimes shown in personal, documentary recollections of important events, people, and places. Sometimes subverted into a cult that turns people into rocks. The documentary feature ‘The Labrador Creative Arts Festival’ celebrates decades of giving students in our remotest places the platform to tell their own stories on stage. We see snippets of plays written and performed there, reflecting the worlds they came from. Weird, personal, familiar. Invitations to visit briefly on the performers’ terms. The vast land around them, the cultures and environments from which the creators are formed... They inform, but don’t limit the pieces being created. Or, they just love rocks, man, there’s nothing wrong with it. LABRADOR IN FOCUS 2:30 pm, Sunday, June 28 at the LSPU Hall

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Composer Sarah Harris @ultra__far chats with Isaac Andrews-Power @iwielddarkmagic7 about using an unusual instrument to score The Muse — a short documentary screening at the Nickel this Saturday at 7pm. For more info on Sarah check out her website s-harris.com

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"Your shorts and your first features — those are the last times you'll have all the control." Allison White @sarafostpictures on producers, distributors, and why you need someone on your side who agrees on the movie you're making. From a Strengthening Development panel at the 2026 Nickel Independent Film Festival, with Melanie Oates and Jamie Miller.