The Kid Who Couldn't Miss

From the outset of the Second World War, it had been clear to Britain that air superiority would be the decisive factor in the battle against Hitler's Germany. At airbases all over England and in the skies over Europe, more than 50,000 Canadian airmen served in the campaign to bomb Germany. Ordered to drop their payloads on a remote and faceless enemy below, the airmen of Bomber Command had a thankless job. For those who survived, the sheer terror and sense of helplessness left an indelible scar.

Soorgul and Amir were two of many Afghan children sent to Tajikistan during the Soviet occupation of their country. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the civil wars that broke out on both sides of the border left the children stranded. They were meant to be in Tajikistan only temporarily, to attend school. Instead, they became stranded there, unable to leave the country until Canada accepted them as refugees. It took 16 years before they could return home. In The Sweetest Embrace Soorgul and Amir return to their country in search of their families. They travel in NGO vehicles (until it becomes too dangerous), then local vans - and finally, when rock-strewn roads become completely impassable, finish their journey on foot through some of Afghanistan's highest mountains. But when their paths diverge, their futures become filled with unexpected and unpredictable turns as they seek to find resolution in their lives. The Sweetest Embrace tells an intimate story set against one of the world's most harsh and yet beautiful landscapes, in a land where life has been shaped by war and hardship but where spirit remains resilient.

From the beginning of the Second World War in 1939, Mackenzie King tried to avoid conscription, lest civil war break out in Canada. Most English Canadians thought young men should be sent to fight. Most French Canadians vehemently disagreed. This same division had nearly torn the country apart during the First World War. Now a similar pressure was building. Should conscription be imposed? In spite of delaying tactics, King had to make a decision in the final year of the war. Mackenzie King and the Conscription Crisis combines archival footage with excerpts from The King Chronicles, a dramatic film series written and directed by Donald Brittain. Some scenes contain graphic language.