Hasan Hadi’s tragicomic The President’s Cake follows young Lamia, who’s selected to provide the cake for her class’s mandated celebration of Saddam Hussein’s birthday, something she and her ailing grandmother can ill afford. The film details the relentless hardships brought about by poverty, international sanctions, and tyrannical leadership, as the pair’s wide-eyed determination and inventiveness is met only with disdain and contempt by their peers and neighbours.

I Swear is a poised, textured portrait of a life lived against expectation. Anchored by Robert Aramayo’s (Lilies Not For Me, Nocturnal Animals) nuanced turn, the film tracks John Davidson, a Scottish man shaped by the onset of severe Tourette’s syndrome in adolescence and the world’s uneasy gaze. Moving beyond biopic mechanics, the story unfolds through moments of dislocation, misfired intentions, and unexpected solidarity as John navigates family estrangement, social misunderstanding, and his own burgeoning voice. Set between the Border towns of the 1980s and later Glasgow, the film examines the porous border between perception and meaning, between restraint and impulse. With restraint and wry humanity, I Swear observes how identity, dignity, and connection are claimed amid disorder.

Within a re-creation of childhood joys lies a more troubling story of a family’s growing crisis in Sophy Romvari’s affecting and intelligent feature debut. The graceful opening scenes depict a period of transition for a Hungarian Canadian family of six as they adapt to a new home on Vancouver Island in the late 1990s, seen from the perspective of the youngest daughter Sasha. Fascinating and moving as a meditation on grief, memory, and love, Blue Heron sees the filmmaker blur the borders between fiction and documentary in ways that aren’t soon forgotten.

Haru (Rinko Kikuchi) and Luis (Alejandro Edda) love competing in Tokyo’s ballroom dance scene, but after a tragedy, Haru withdraws into isolation. When friends coax her back to the studio, she develops an infatuation with the new instructor and must face what comes next as sparks begin to fly.