A Useful Life

Not Waving But Drowning is a chronological look at growing up, formed from two different stories. The two sets of friends represent the American dilemma between what you have known and what you hope to know; the tear between longing for the past and the desire to explore.

As a Sikh man with a full beard and turban, AMRIT SINGH is often the target of racial profiling. But when he sees his dreams of becoming Chief of Surgery at a state-of-the-art transplant center dwindle because of his appearance, Amrit goes against a tradition he's maintained his whole life and cuts his hair. Hiding this decision from his girlfriend and family in Toronto is only the start of a series of compromises Amrit finds himself making as he deals with hospital politics and health care injustices. When his compromises result in the death of a patient, Amrit begins to reexamine the value of the religious traditions he'd turned his back on.

Reeling from her mother's recent death, Ruby Lee Gissing relocates to Florida to start anew. After finding a job at a souvenir store, Ruby becomes friends with the shop's owner, Mildred Chambers, and slowly acclimates to her new surroundings. Before long, she's juggling the affections of Mildred's Lothario son, Ricky, and the good-natured Mike. As she wavers between Ricky and Mike, Ruby also tries to come to terms with her past.

On the birthday of her late father, a deposed Maharaja, a displaced Indian princess living in London and his former private secretary watch home movies and reminisce about royal India.

A retired teacher and a soap star leave their routines and the men in their lives behind and embark on a weekend trip.

A teaching assistant at a private Buenos Aires school begins obsessively spying on her students in the early 1980s, as the public rises up against the military dictatorship.

A sailor takes a short leave to visit his hometown and see if his mother is still alive.

Despite her fame and fortune, Mina, a successful Indian actress in Mumbai, can't forget her little sister Sita, from whom she was forced to separate after their mother's death in a village. Thirty years later she will finally find out that Sita is alive and well in Barcelona. However, Sita's adoptive parents have erased all traces of her past. She is now called Paula, works as a researcher in Biology and has no recollection of her Indian background, let alone of Mina. Faced with the shocking truths of her past, Paula begins a long journey of self-discovery, aided along the way by her budding romance with the handsome Indian immigrant Prakash. A story of hope and love across Mumbai and Barcelona; from India to the Mediterranean and all the way back.

A successful businessman attempting to resurrect his life buys and boards a dilapidated sailboat.

Man in relationship connects with another man and tries to make love-triangle work.

Two friends travel from Nova Scotia to Toronto in hope of finding a better life.

Every Friday, the Colonel puts on his only suit and goes to the dock to await a letter announcing the arrival of his pension. But the townsfolk all know that this pension will never come. His wife also knows it, and even he knows it. But he is still waiting, living with the pain of the death of his son.

Two old friends and small-time crooks embark on a crime spree, but take an unexpected detour that could lead them down the road to redemption.

Jess, age 18, and Moss, age 12 are second cousins in the dark-fire tobacco fields of rural Western Kentucky. Without immediate families that they can relate to, and lacking friends their own age, they only have each other. Over the course of a summer they venture on a journey exploring deep secrets and hopes of a future while being confronted with fears of isolation, abandonment and an unknown tomorrow.

Elena Gallenti is an anthropology graduate student struggling to complete her thesis on 'modern means of communication.' All that changes when she meets her new boyfriend's teenage kids, who are going through their own journeys of self-discovery. All of them learn to navigate love and intimacy in the digital age.

Mark leads a team of office workers whose memories have been surgically divided between their work and personal lives. When a mysterious colleague appears outside of work, it begins a journey to discover the truth about their jobs.

Annie Oakley was an American Western television series that fictionalized the life of famous sharpshooter Annie Oakley. It ran from January 1954 to February 1957 in syndication, for a total of 81 black and white episodes, each 25 minutes long. ABC showed reruns on Saturday and Sunday daytime from 1959 to 1960 and from 1964 to 1965.

The West Wing provides a glimpse into presidential politics in the nation's capital as it tells the stories of the members of a fictional presidential administration. These interesting characters have humor and dedication that touches the heart while the politics that they discuss touch on everyday life.

Detective Mike Sweeney has just moved with his wife and daughters from Toronto to his hometown of Durham County after the death of his partner. Hoping to escape the violent world of big city police work, Mike falls into a suburban world besieged by crime, abuse and murder.

A realistic glimpse into the daily lives of the officers and detectives at an urban police station.

After 19 years on Death Row for the rape and murder of his teenage girlfriend, Daniel Holden is going home. His conviction has been vacated due to new DNA evidence. Now he has to return to a world he no longer knows and his reentry into the outside world may be as unforgiving as prison. Daniel is haunted by the past, dogged by the present, and uncertain of the future. As he struggles to adapt to his new life, his homecoming reignites the fears of a small town and threatens to shatter his family’s fragile peace. Daniel’s alleged crime divided a community. Will his freedom tear it in half?

Griffin Conner, a med-school dropout having left in a haze of disgrace, is forced to return to Bethune General Hospital as its newest orderly and work alongside his family.

The lives of two childhood best friends, Bill and Epstein, in the late 1890s as they flock to the gold rush capital in the untamed Yukon Territory. This man-versus-nature tale places our heroes in a land full of undiscovered wealth, but ravaged by harsh conditions, unpredictable weather and desperate, dangerous characters including greedy businessmen, seductive courtesans and native tribes witnessing the destruction of their people and land by opportunistic entrepreneurs.

Four women juggle love, careers, and parenthood. They support, challenge, and try not to judge each other as life throws them curveballs. Whether it is an identity crisis, a huge job opportunity, postpartum depression, or an unplanned pregnancy – they face both the good and bad with grace and humour.

Dr. Bashir Hamed, a Syrian doctor with battle-tested skills in emergency medicine, makes the difficult decision to flee his country and build a new life in Canada with his younger sister Amira. Bash works to navigate a new environment after earning a coveted residency in the Emergency Department of one of the best hospitals in Toronto, York Memorial.

An Indigenous teen struggles to support his dysfunctional family as myth, magic, and monsters slowly infiltrate his life.

Inés Suárez, a young, humble woman from Extremadura who sets out for the New World to look for her husband, lost on the other side of the Atlantic along with his dreams of glory. Once there, Inés does not find her husband, but she does find the passionate love of Pedro de Valdivia, Francisco Pizarro's Field Master.

Fluid millennial Sabi Mehboob straddles various identities from bartender at an LGBTQ bookstore/bar, to the youngest child in a Pakistani family, to the de facto parent of a downtown hipster family. Sabi feels like they’re in transition in every aspect of their life, from gender to love to sexuality to family to career.

An aristocratic Englishwoman, Lady Cornelia Locke, arrives into the new and wild landscape of the American West to wreak revenge on the man she sees as responsible for the death of her son.

Returning to Paris after exile from Hollywood, Judith is intent of making a comeback with a new movie. However, her 16-year-old daughter falls in love with her much older dance teacher and Judith is forced to deal with personal ambition, maternal anxiety and the demons of her past with humor and disillusion.