Mariane Béliveau is a French documentary filmmaker and sociologist. She has been interested in documentary film since her studies in sociology and has also worked as a social worker. She is the author of two short documentaries, Narratives from Saint Gabriel (2017) and I Usually Sing It in the Shower (2018).

Mariane Béliveau is a French documentary filmmaker and sociologist. She has been interested in documentary film since her studies in sociology and has also worked as a social worker. She is the author of two short documentaries, Narratives from Saint Gabriel (2017) and I Usually Sing It in the Shower (2018).

One of our team of Rendezvous with Madness film programmers, Emma Badame, is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved entertainment journalist, the current Managing Editor at That Shelf, and an award-nominated digital marketing strategist for film, television, and not-for-profit arts organizations. Her coverage has appeared in POV, Billboard and Cineplex Magazines, on The Mary Sue, eTalk, Breakfast Television, PopLife, MuchMusic and more. This is her fourth year with the festival.

Benjamin Flaherty is an Austin-based filmmaker with a diverse collection of work – from documentary and art films with Lou Reed & Lola Schnabel to commercial spots for major brands. His short form PSA’s have been awarded at Cannes, D&AD, One Show and the Clios. His documentary feature debut, SHUFFLE, won the Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature at SXSW 2025.

Benjamin Flaherty is an Austin-based filmmaker with a diverse collection of work – from documentary and art films with Lou Reed & Lola Schnabel to commercial spots for major brands. His short form PSA’s have been awarded at Cannes, D&AD, One Show and the Clios. His documentary feature debut, SHUFFLE, won the Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature at SXSW 2025.

Niitsitapi, amateur physicist, frybread-eating machine, Damien Eagle Bear is a multifaceted filmmaker from the Kainai First Nation of the Blackfoot Confederacy. His career began with the short experimental documentary Napi, which asks the question of what will happen when the Blackfoot trickster gets behind the camera. Damien has gone on to produce, direct and write short films, web series and documentaries that have played at film festivals across both Canada and the United States.  Damien continues to expand his horizons with work that explores the themes of belonging and Indigenous resiliency.

Lindsay Monture is Mohawk, turtle clan from Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. A graduate of York University’s Film and Media Studies program, Lindsay has worked in the media arts sector for over 15 years. Throughout her career she has followed her passion for the arts, culture, language and education. Her desire to work with Indigenous communities has been enriched through opportunities to work with non-profit organizations such as; Kaha:wi Dance Theatre, Native Earth Performing Arts, Maoriland Film Festival, Revolutions Per Minute, Woodland Cultural Centre and Indigenous Climate Action. Lindsay is currently the Artistic Director for the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival.

Since she was 10 years old child, she was writing poetry in her mother language Arabic. What inspired Ghadeer to write is nature, her father, love, longing, nostalgia, diaspora, her homeland Palestine, difficult emotions, hard feelings, trauma, feminism, freedom, liberation, human rights and justice.

Ghadeer is the founder of Toronto Poetry Club. She has organized inclusive and diverse multicultural multilingual open mic poetry nights in Toronto for 8 years. She has published her Arabic and English poetry in newspapers, magazines, exhibitions, including the anthology “Poetry ReRooted: Decolonizing Our Tongues” and in the anthology “To Hear The Birds” 

Ghadeer’s poem “Alhuwiyya (The Identity)” had been published in English in an anthology of “Muslim American Writers at Home” in San Francisco by Freedom Voices Publisher. It was about her 3 different identities contained within her while being in diaspora, relocating in different countries and her nostalgia to her homeland Palestine. She received a grant from The Toronto Arts Council to start a Multilingual Poetry Collective. 

Ghadeer is an Ontario Ambassador, Outreach to Arab speaking community of National Association of Adult Survivors of Child Abuse (NAASCA). She completed her BSc. in Computer Science and MBA at the American University of Sharjah in UAE. Her dream is to have her own house and host her poetry nights, under the name Qahwa Art Café, in its back or front yard in the Summer and in the basement in the Winter. “Qahwa” means coffee in Arabic.

Kelly Rose Pflug-Back is a writer and creative writing workshop facilitator. Her fiction, poetry, and journalism has appeared recently in publications like The Briarpatch, The Deadlands, and This Magazine, as well as anthologies such as Queer Little Nightmares (Arsenal Pulp, 2022) and Imaginarium: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing (ChiZine, 2012) . Their debut collection of poems, The Hammer of Witches (Caitlin Press/Dagger Editions, 2020), recently placed as a finalist in the upcoming Bisexual Book Awards.

The Infernal Grove is an unsystematic structural analysis of drug use, addiction and recovery (not necessarily in that order). It is anti-carceral, anti-prohibition and seeks to amplify the voices of radical harm-reductionists and their coalitions. It recognizes the value of the sacred while rejecting all forms of piety. It posits wonder and the land as spaces of enchantment, as not an antidote to but an extension of the space opened up by drugs.

It’s based on the artists’ lived experience of drug use and the consequent interventions of state and medical establishments, which included both involuntary hospitalization and outpatient rehabilitation.