Humber's 2026 film students premiered their final projects at the Hot Docs Ted Rodgers Cinema, and the lineup to get in wrapped around the block on April 16.
The former Bloor Street cinema, near Bathurst Street, hosted the event, where 17 productions were shown, including six short films, 10 public service announcements and a documentary broken into segments between each film.
Everything shown at the event was directed, produced, and worked on by the students in Humber's Film and Television program.
He Hath Risen, written and directed by Jared Devries and produced by Evan Luna, is about two men capitalizing on the death of a church's pastor by faking his resurrection.
Devries had grown up in a very religious household. He heard a story from his pastor about another pastor who died in a car accident and was resurrected after being in a morgue. This story inspired the script for the film.
"I realized I couldn't be a Jedi, and being an archaeologist is much more boring, but being a filmmaker, you get to build an adventure or build an exciting new world," Devries said when talking about his inspiration for getting into the film industry.
Super Date, written and directed by Jared Travers and produced by Audrey Johnston and Alex Choi, is a story of a super-villain ending up on a speed date with the city's superhero and falling in love.
The premiere had a wide range of genres from lighthearted and comedic to thrillers, some bordering on horror.
Poser, written and directed by James Freire and produced by Keelan Dunn, is a look at a model who questions his appearance and tries to fix it.
Freire, 24, got inspiration for the film after coming home one day, looking in the mirror and saying, "Shit, I don't recognize myself." This was three years before applying to Humber's film program.
The Honey Badger, written and directed by Adrian Coelho and produced by Azeez Noormohamed, is about a mother and son struggling to survive during an apocalypse, resorting to desperation as the mother becomes fatally ill.
Room 206, written and directed by Phinehas Iaboni and produced by Luca Ladisa, is a tale of a man who suffers from psychological damage after witnessing an unsettling event in the next room.
Iaboni's film, Room 206, won the audience favourite during the premiere.
Mothered Nature, written by Jade Sobota, directed by Olivia Bronwyn, and produced by Dana Roggero, is a story about two mothers in a watermelon competition, with one of them learning from the other the true nature of what it means to be a loving and caring parent.
Bronwyn, 28, said that every production will have its challenges. When directing Mothered Nature, she said that the most challenging part was the weather.
"We had to battle the unpredictability of the weather of October, which meant a lot of extended shooting hours and having to fake the time of day we were shooting in," Bronwyn said.
The segmented documentary, Planting The Seed, directed by Joseph Liu, produced by Olivia Bronwyn, was about how the filmmakers were working to develop a more sustainable and eco-friendly future for the filmmaking process.
Nathaniel Navarro, 20, was a producer for the Sentence To Survive PSA. He always had a passion for making YouTube videos, which eventually led him to take Humber's film and television program.
"I would always critique films, and keep in mind I'm like six years old at this time," Navarro said.
His dream project to work on in the future would be a Sonic the Hedgehog film.
Meagan King, 20, was a director for the Farmers For Climate Solutions PSA. She had grown up in Chatham, Ont., saying it had a large agricultural background, which was her inspiration for directing this particular segment.
"I feel like film is my way of making the world a better place. I wanna make things that impact people in good ways," King said when talking about her inspiration to get into the film industry.
The films will have a festival run, meaning they will only be screened at certain film festivals before they are accessible to the general audience.
