OCan is a Film Festival in Ottawa that celebrates Canadian film.
Through annual festival screenings at the Bytowne Cinema in November and activities throughout the year, our volunteer‑run not‑for‑profit organization works to promote Canadian film as distinctive and vital to our country’s culture and the local economy.
Our call for submissions is now closed. The jury is busy reviewing and scoring submissions. Official selections will be announced in advance of our festival screenings in November.
Join us for a fundraiser screening on Thursday, June 22nd at 9pm
at the Bytowne Cinema.
A fundraiser screening on June 22nd at 9pm at the Bytowne Cinema
The Ottawa Canadian Film Festival (OCan) presents episodes from locally shot short-form dramatic series “Chateau Laurier” and “No Regrets” on Thursday, June 22nd at 9pm at the Bytowne Cinema in Ottawa.
Join us as we screen a few episodes of each series along with a panel / Q&A with members of both filmmaking teams.
This is a unique opportunity to see these productions on a big screen.
Tickets are available on Eventbrite, at the Bytowne box office online, and at the door.
This screening is a fundraiser. Profits will be shared by the Chateau Lauier and No Regrets teams, and OCan.
Selected Press:
Logline: A wry slice-of-life glimpse into romance in the 1900s.
Synopsis:
Edwardian newlyweds Hattie and Vivian navigate their lives on the other side of happily ever after and learn that life as heirs to the grand Chateau Laurier hotel comes with slings, arrows, enemies, opportunities, and strife.
Principal Cast:
Crew:
Selected Press:
Logline: That one choice could be the one you live to regret.
Synopsis:
Bianca Harrison seems to be living the dream, she works for one of the top fashion magazines in town and is married to wealthy divorce attorney Andre Harrison.
Her life takes a sudden turn after an unexpected encounter with her ex-fiancé Nick Merton.
Nick slowly finds his way back in Bianca’s life and purposely finds a way to constantly cross her path. His fascination with Bianca starts to have an effect on his marriage and he loses sight of what’s important. Nick and Bianca’s mindless decisions soon cause everything around them to fall apart. They find themselves in a situation that they might live to regret.
Principal Cast:
Crew:
OCan is a Film Festival in Ottawa that celebrates Canadian film. Through annual festival screenings at the Bytowne Cinema in November and activities throughout the year, we work to promote Canadian film as distinctive and vital to our country’s culture and the local economy.
OCanFilmFest is a not-for-profit organization that is artist and volunteer-run, and is strongly committed to fostering diversity in its approach to programming. We strive to achieve this by encouraging film submissions from under-represented independent artists including those who identify as women, non-binary, Black, Indigenous, Persons of Colour (BIPoC), persons from the 2SLGBTQ+ community, and persons with disabilities. We recruit diverse members and voices to our Board of Directors and film selection juries.
Sponsorships, donations, grants, film submission fees, and proceeds from ticket sales are used to fund exhibition / artist fees that are paid out to filmmakers for the use of their work in our annual festival screenings.
We believe in programming and content that provides Ottawa audiences with entertaining and high-quality independent films, information, activities and events. Our festival, events, online presence and resources aim to encourage collaboration, artistic innovation and creativity while providing access for a broad audience segment. The Ottawa Canadian Film Festival is committed to cooperation and collaboration with other arts organizations as well as the business community. Our programs are interactive, entertaining, educational and great value for the money.
The Ottawa Canadian Film Festival is an evolution of the Treepot Film Festival, independent filmmaker Jith Paul’s series of public screenings that showcased over 150 Canadian independent films at movie theatres, universities, colleges and parks in downtown Ottawa between 2011 and 2014. Although successful and popular with local audiences, Paul decided it was time to take the Treepot screenings to the next level in order to further promote independent filmmakers and to reach out and appeal to larger and broader based audiences in a more formalized structure. The result is the Ottawa Canadian Film Festival, founded in 2015, with its first annual screenings in 2017. Since then the festival has presented Canadian films of various genres and durations from filmmakers across the country at both in-person and online screenings.
OCanFilmFest is a artist and volunteer-run, not-for-profit film festival. Donations are welcome and can be made at PayPal.me/ocanfilmfest.
DonateThe Ottawa Canadian Film Festival features short, medium-length and feature-length Canadian independently-produced films from a variety of genres from Comedy, Drama, Horror, Thriller, Documentary and more. We have have been fortunate to feature films from almost every province and territory across Canada. Here are the films that have been featured at the festival since the inception of the festival in 2017.
Screenings for the OCan Film Festival usually take place during the first weekend in November every year.
Our festival screenings moved to the historic Bytowne Cinema (325 Rideau Street, Ottawa, ON K1N 5Y4) in 2022. We hosted our previous screenings at La Nouvelle Scène and the Arts Court Theatre. We briefly moved to online screenings in 2020 and 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ottawa is fortunate to host a variety of film festivals thoughout the calendar year at both indoor and outdoor venues throughout the city. Here are some of the differentiating features of the Ottawa Canadian Film Festival:
Filmmakers from across Canada are invited to submit films to OCanFilmFest via FilmFreeway. The Call for Submissions lists all criteria and is usually open from January to May each year, with various discount periods posted with the call. The jury watches and evaluates films over the summer and official selections usually announced in October.
There are couple of reasons that motivate the inclusion of the submission fee. From our experience with earlier seasons, free submissions generate a large number of spam submissions and/or submissions that do not fit the criteria mentioned in the call. We are a volunteer-run organization and the investment in terms of time to weed out and disqualify these entries was significant. It is hoped that requiring a submission fee would encourage filmmakers to make sure the films they submit match the required criteria. We have certainly seen that this is the case over the past few years. The second reason for requiring the submission fee is to use it as one of several sources we use to fund the artist/exhibition fee we pay to all filmmakers whose films are selected to screen at the festival. There are discounts for early submissions. Check the OCanFilmFest listing on FilmFreeway for details.
Yes. We pay artist/exhibition fees for films selected to screen at our annual festival in November. It is something we are passionate about and is something we are proud to say we have done since our first annual festival screening in 2017. It is very much in line with our mission to promote and support Canadian film and filmmakers.
Visit our FAQ page for more questions and answers about OCan.
We host annual in-person festival screenings in Ottawa every November. Out of an abundance of caution we moved the screenings to Vimeo's Video-On Demand platform in 2020 and 2021, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. We returned to in-person screenings at the Bytowne Cinema in November 2022!
In addition to our annual screenings, OCanFilmFest programs a number of events including screenings, a web series related to independent filmmaking in Ottawa and elswhere in Canada.
In 2020 we launched ‘Shorts at Home’, a series of short films presented online using Vimeo’s Video on Demand service as a means to continue our mission to promote and celebrate and promote Canadian filmmakers and films in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The films for this series are curated by the OCanFilmFest Board of Directors, the selections are non-competitive and are scheduled to run between the annual festival screenings. In 2021, we extended our artist fee policy to the 'Shorts at Home' selections. In February 2022, we launched a second series, 'OCan Spotlight', which includes feature-length and short Canadian films, previously featured at the festival, now available to stream on YouTube, Vimeo and on streaming services like CBC Gem.
In 2022, we launched a companion blog, film613.ca. With a mandate to build engagement and community among film fans in the Ottawa / Outaouais area, the blog consists of film reviews, filmmaking and film promotion tips, and articles related to film and film appreciation contributed by volunteers.
Jith Paul is an independent filmmaker based in Ottawa. An engineer by training he decided to take a detour to follow his passion for film. He began the Treepot Film Festival in 2011, a series of 10 curated screenings at independent cinemas and public parks which evolved into the Ottawa Canadian Film Festival in 2015.
Blair Campbell is a graduate of the television broadcasting program at Algonquin College in Ottawa. He works as an independent producer focused on providing support to local, independent filmmakers through his collaboration with Moonrise Productions.
Dancia had her start in the Media/Arts & Entertainment Industry at age 5. She has worked with a range of brands and organizations, from Disney to Ottawa’s local Awake At Dawn. Susilo is also a serial entrepreneur and currently works as the executive director of The Missing Link Project, a youth nonprofit.
Nick is a graduate student at the University of Ottawa and a lawyer licensing candidate at the Law Society of Ontario. He previously served on the University of Ottawa Students’ Union (UOSU) Board of Directors and as Editor-in-Chief of the student-run law blog Le Flagrant Délit.
Looking for information about an OCan film? Here is a list of all films featured at the festival.
Use the area below to search through the content on the pages of this site using Google.
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drop us an email
OCanFilmFest
