The Twin Pine Cinema in Waskesiu will be bustling this weekend for the 21st annual Reel Rave International Film Festival. (Waskesiu Heritage Museum/Facebook)

By Logan Lehmann

On the big screen

Waskesiu’s film festival going all-Canadian for 21st installment

Sep 4, 2025 | 12:00 PM

The 21st annual Reel Rave International Film Festival will take centre stage in Waskesiu, within Prince Albert National Park this weekend.

This year, the festival will present six selections from Sept. 5-7, including a pair of special features that were created here in Saskatchewan.

Chris Astle is the owner and president of Twin Pine Cinema in Waskesiu and said all but one film is from the Great White North.

“This year, five of the six selections that we have for the Reel Rave International Film Festival are Canadian, either Canadian-produced or Canadian-developed, and really the reason for that is partially because we have so much great talent here in Canada. But also, what’s going on geopolitically across the world, I thought it was a good year.”

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The one standalone international selection in this year’s festival is All We Imagine As Light, a 2024 drama written and directed by Payal Kapadia, and produced by companies from France, India, Luxembourg, Italy, and the Netherlands.

Astle said the reason they decided to include it among the all-Canadian lineup was simply because it was too good not to, adding it was a winner of the prized Cannes Grand Prix, the second-most prestigious award at the Cannes Film Festival in France. The fiction feature follows two nurses experiencing personal turning points tinged with the possibility of romance.

“We didn’t want our audience to miss out on a really great film. It’s getting great reviews, so we thought we would bring that one in just because it’s so highly [liked] alongside our five other Canadian films.”

Among those five Canadian films are You Are Not Alone, Ghosts of the Sea, Endless Cookie, Shepherds, and Drive Back Home.

As mentioned, two Saskatchewan projects are in the festival as special selections.

The first is titled Welcome to Kittytown, a comedy/post-apocalyptic horror feature that was made in Saskatoon. Prior to its screening on Friday night, the Saskatoon-born director and producer Doug Luciuk, along with the cast, will talk about what it’s like filming in Canada, and how they made the movie on an extremely small budget.

The second is an eight-minute animated short called Sacred Gift that was produced by Dr. Caroline Tait, a Waskesiu local and the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Health Equity and Inclusion. It will be shown prior to Endless Cookie on both Friday evening and Saturday morning.

Astle said attendance for the festival has been rising since returning post-pandemic, a trend he hopes to see continue this year.

“That’s been rising year over year for about the last three or four years. Last year, it was somewhere around 1,100 individual admissions, which is fantastic. We’re hoping to equal, if not beat that, this year.”

Tickets are available at one of three will call locations at Twin Pine Cinema or WaskeSweets in Waskesiu, or at the Mann Art Gallery in Prince Albert. Tickets can also be purchased at the festival with will call on Friday at Twin Pine Cinema from 3-6 p.m., and again on Sept. 6 at Twin Pine Cinema from 9-10 a.m.

For more information about the 21st annual Reel Rave International Film Festival, its selections, and tickets, click here.

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loganc.lehmann@pattisonmedia.com

On Bluesky: @loganlehmann.bsky.social