Newcastle is a layered, beautifully shot coming-of-age story following pro-surfer-in-training Jesse and the lost weekend he and his buddies spend on a secluded beach. Seventeen-year-old Jesse lives in the shadow of his older brother Victor’s failure to become surfing’s Next Big Thing. Jesse’s emo brother Fergus tags along, eager to be one of the gang. The guys will be tempted, taunted and tested as their lives change forever, in this risk-taking film that paddles out past the breakers and takes on the big waves. With mind-blowing surfing footage, breathtaking scenery both Aussie landscape and actors onscreen— and a story that’s true to teenage form, Newcastle helps redefine a generation desperate to find where exactly it fits in. After all, you’re only young forever once. Canadian Premiere

Life isn’t some vertical or horizontal line. You have your own internal world, and it’s not neat. —Patti Smith Punk poetess Patti Smith is profiled in this highly anticipated feature documentary by first-time filmmaker Steven Sebring. Following the fiercely original musician for nearly a decade, Sebring avoids any direct chronological or dramatic approaches to Smith's life and art. Instead he achieves a rich collage of present and past in the poet's world, including her relationships with the late controversial photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and playwright/actor Sam Shepard. At the centre of the film, of course, is Smith's extraordinary music, which electrified the world from 1975 onward when her stunning debut album Horses prepared the ground for the 1970s alternative music movement.