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Carol Nguyen’s Still Night, Burning House to have its international premiere at IDFA. International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam also presenting Alanis Obomsawin’s 1993 classic Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance

PRESS RELEASE
13/10/2026

October 13, 2026 – Montreal – National Film Board of Canada (NFB)

Vietnamese-Canadian filmmaker Carol Nguyen’s feature documentary debut, Still Night, Burning House, will have its international premiere on November 15 at International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). Taking place November 12 to 22, this prestigious showcase of the world’s best non-fiction storytelling will also screen trailblazing Abenaki filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin’s landmark NFB documentary Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance.

A Metafilms, National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and Portage Films co-production, Still Night, Burning House follows the director’s family on a journey to Vietnam, where they face long-unspoken questions about an uncle’s mysterious death. Carol Nguyen will be in attendance at the IDFA premiere, which comes after the film’s world premiere earlier this fall at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).

The festival will present legendary director Alanis Obomsawin’s award-winning 1993 NFB film Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance as part of its multi-year focus program, Dead Angle: Common Ground. This year’s program explores the act of finding common ground: how people come together through solidarity, collective resistance, community and public space.

About Carol Nguyen’s Still Night, Burning House (76 min; Metafilms/NFB/Portage Films)

Producers: Audrey-Ann Dupuis-Pierre (Portage Films); Robert Vroom and Ariel Nasr (NFB)

Executive producers: Sylvain Corbeil (Metafilms), Nathalie Cloutier (NFB), Bob Moore (EyeSteelFilm) and Anh Duy Vo Dinh (Spotlight Production)

Press kit: mediaspace.nfb.ca/epk/still-night-burning-house

  • In her deeply personal debut feature, Carol Nguyen charts her Toronto family’s first reunion since her uncle’s mysterious death. Travelling together to Vietnam, the family embarks on a revelatory—and at times uncanny—journey through intergenerational trauma and many-layered loss. With care and probing curiosity, Nguyen guides her loved ones as they navigate unsealed medical records and a decades-long silence, ultimately leading them back to each other. A metaphysical poem for complex mourning, Still Night, Burning House shows how storytelling can transform grief into collective healing.
  • Following its 2026 festival tour, the film will have its Canadian theatrical release in spring 2027.
  • Carol Nguyen is a Montreal-based, Vietnamese-Canadian filmmaker whose films explore themes of cultural identity, family and silence. Still Night, Burning House is the follow-up and companion to her 2019 short No Crying at the Dinner Table, which received over 15 awards and was selected for more than 100 festivals, including IDFA 2019.

About Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993)

  • Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance is an acclaimed feature-length documentary on the 1990 Kanien’kéhaka (Mohawk) uprising in Kanehsatake and Oka, Quebec. The film received 15 international awards, including the Distinguished Documentary Achievement Award from the International Documentary Association and the Award for Best Canadian Feature Film from the Toronto Festival of Festivals (now known as TIFF).
  • A member of the Abenaki Nation and one of Canada’s most distinguished artists, Alanis Obomsawin has been a trailblazing champion of Indigenous storytelling and cinema throughout a legendary career at the NFB that began in 1967.

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Media Relations

  • About the NFB

    Founded in 1939, the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) is a one-of-a-kind producer, co-producer and distributor of engaging, relevant and innovative documentary and animated films. As a talent incubator, it is one of the world’s leading creative centres. The NFB has enabled Canadians to tell and hear each other’s stories for over eight decades, and its films are a reliable and accessible educational resource. The NFB is also recognized around the world for its expertise in preservation and conservation, and for its rich and vibrant collection of works, which form a pillar of Canada’s cultural heritage. To date, the NFB has produced more than 14,000 works, 7,000 of which can be streamed free of charge at nfb.ca. The NFB and its productions and co-productions have earned over 7,000 awards, including 12 Oscars and an Honorary Academy Award for overall excellence in cinema.