One of the first feature films ever to have been completed in Manitoba, Downtime captures the dark and mysterious world of Winnipeg as grim and grimy where 20-somethings scrape by in dead-end jobs. Downtime is reflective of director Greg Hanec’s unique “cinema of awkward” style, where his works are - according to critic Caelum Vatnsdal – “less about artistic process than about the speed bumps, hurdles and unbreachable walls that artists encounter along the way.”

This low-budget independent miracle, created for a mere $16,000, was accepted into the prestigious Berlin Film Festival, and would serve as a preview of the capacity of the filmmakers that would come to emerge from Winnipeg against all odds, inspired by the achievement of Hanec and following in his footsteps.

Plays with the short films:

• FM YOUTH (Dir. Stéphane Oystryk, 2009, Canada, 2 min.) – Young, bored and Franco-Manitoban.

• NIGHT MAYOR (Dir. Guy Maddin, 2009, Canada, 10 min.) – A fantastical film about the night mayor of Winnipeg, an inventor of Bosnian descent who harnesses the power of aurora borealis to transmit distinctly Canadian images across the Great White North.