Versatile Pictures

Get to know our 2026 Lifetime Achievement Awardee, Stanley Nelson, acclaimed director and visionary storyteller. Don't miss this opportunity to be a part of this landmark event.

📅 Feb 11, 2026
🕢 7:30 PM EST
📍 Isabel Bader Theatre

Celebrating his impact, legacy, and excellence.

EARLY REVIEW: Sam Raimi finally made a new horror movie, and it rules. Send Help!

link to the full review in the comments

The Curse of the Open Heart

There are days my veins hum  
with frequencies not my own  
thousands of receptors raw and unshielded  
pulling in the static of the world  

I am a satellite for sorrow  
downloading grief like a duty  
as if healing others  
Is written into my pulse  
my heart keeps expanding  
stretching past its safe borders  
taking on the anguish of friends  
the trembling of strangers  
whose names I will never know  

they call us bleeding hearts  
as if compassion were a malfunction  
as if caring too deeply were a glitch  
but tell me how do you mute  
the cries that tremble from the news
when bombs fall on children  
and the world tells me to scroll  
to shop to ignore  
gaslighted by glitter  
we are told to dream in purchases  
while the earth quietly cries  

no rest for those who feel too sharply  
each headline slices each story lingers  
and I become paralyzed  
stuck in the amber of overthinking  
heavy hearted  
barely breathing between the empathy waves  

still I cannot shut it off  
this is both my burden and my bloom  
a curse sewn into kindness  
a heart that beats for many  
and breaks for all  💜

I have spent so much of my life everywhere but here. My mind is always racing ahead or drifting back, rarely anchored in the moment. And yet, somewhere in that whirlwind, I have been fortunate to meet and connect with incredibly talented filmmakers from every corner of the globe. Those connections keep me grounded, and for that, I will always be grateful, especially to the CaribbeanTales organization for opening that door.

In Barbados, as the tide rolled in and out, I could almost see my thoughts and dreams etched into the sand. The story of always striving, always reaching, and somehow falling just short. That same rhythm echoed on distant fields and arenas - the Oilers giving their all only to fall in the finals again, the Jays taking us on a wild ride to Game 7 after decades of waiting, the Whitecaps battling hard yet bowing out to the Floridians. I felt their heartbreak because it mirrored my own.

About impermanence, winning and losing are often part of the game but truth be told we as artists are not playing that game, we do what we do because we have no other option. To join the machinery of mindless churn, would be soul destroying. For there is an incessant drive to say something and share it to the world.

After three rejections from Telefilm and their kind, you would think I would tire of pushing against locked doors. But no, not even close. If anything, the fire burns fiercer. I believe in something I call HAQ. What is mine will find its way to me. And when it does, there will be no stopping it. Accepting a no has never been an option. Time to get those long johns and start preparing for Edmonton 🥶🛩️