What to know
- CaribbeanTales International Film Festival runs from Sept. 8 to 13 at Dundas West Studio, with a special event at Harbourfront Centre.
- Toronto filmmaker Hannah Yohannes’ Little Dreams, a short drama about motherhood and ambition, is part of the opening-night programme.
- This year’s lineup features films connected to Canada, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Belize, Puerto Rico, Haiti and other parts of the Caribbean diaspora.
- Highlights include Girls of Steel, Bumpa and the Canadian premiere of Queen of Soca, alongside filmmaker talks and an awards ceremony.
A Toronto-made short film exploring motherhood, ambition and the pressure women face to choose between the two will help open this year’s CaribbeanTales International Film Festival.
Little Dreams, directed by Toronto-based Eritrean Canadian filmmaker Hannah Yohannes, is part of the festival’s opening-night programme on Tuesday, Sept. 8. The nine-minute drama follows Briana Blake, an actor approaching a major career breakthrough whose plans are reshaped by pregnancy and the demands of raising a child.
“Little Dreams is a love letter to moms to pour tenderness and care into their ambitions and their careers the same way that they do their children,” Yohannes told Now Toronto.
The film was written by and stars Chattrisse Dolabaille, whose experiences with motherhood helped shape its story. Yohannes said the scripted film also looks beyond the physical changes of becoming a parent to explore the emotional and often invisible labour that can remain even when someone has a supportive partner and family.
Months after giving birth, Briana struggles to reconcile the career she imagined for herself with her new responsibilities. But the film ultimately pushes back against the idea that motherhood and artistic fulfilment must be mutually exclusive.
A festival opener rooted in resilience
Little Dreams will screen during Roots of Resilience, the opening programme of the festival’s 2026 edition, Screen Share: Caribbean Stories, Collective Power.
The programme brings together stories about people and communities confronting uncertainty through care, determination and collective action. Yohannes said being selected for opening night gives the film a meaningful role in introducing those themes.
“It’s an honour to have it slotted in for opening night,” she said. “It goes to show that they’ve always been about community and always about family and supporting filmmakers and their work.”
The evening will also feature Beach Inna Bondage: The Fight for Jamaica’s Coastline, a documentary by Emiel Martens and Elsie Vermeer about a grassroots movement fighting to preserve public access to Jamaica’s beaches.
Opening night will close with Eladio Arvelo’s Wealth Untold, which follows a multigenerational group of women working to protect Belize’s barrier reef and the coastal communities that depend on it. A filmmaker talkback will follow the screenings.
For Yohannes, Little Dreams also represents the kind of collaboration that can happen when creators from across the Black diaspora come together. Dolabaille is Jamaican and Trinidadian, while producer Danilo Reyes is Jamaican and Filipino.
Yohannes said her Eritrean background has shaped her interest in empathy, community and supporting stories beyond her own culture.
“There’s beauty in our distinctive ancestries,” she said, adding that different cultural backgrounds do not need to create walls between filmmakers when they share a larger message.
Yohannes has known Dolabaille for 13 years after the two met through Yohannes’ earlier film Home Away. Based on Yohannes’ own experiences as a young single parent, the film follows a pregnant teenager who is disowned by her family and finds a different kind of family in a youth shelter.
While Little Dreams reflects a different stage of parenthood, Yohannes said both stories examine family, identity and what it means for women to continue becoming who they want to be.
What else is screening at CaribbeanTales
The 2026 programme runs from Sept. 8 to 13, bringing films from Canada, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Belize, Puerto Rico, Suriname, Haiti and other parts of the Caribbean and its wider diaspora to Toronto.
On Sept. 9, Girls of Steel follows students at Trinidad and Tobago’s St. Francois Girls’ College as they attempt to reclaim their Junior Panorama title after the pandemic interrupted their school’s winning steelpan tradition.
The Sept. 11 programme includes Bumpa, a documentary examining twerking and whining as expressions of African diasporic culture, community, identity and resistance. That evening will also feature Fi Wi Story: Jamaican Stories, a collection of Jamaican films exploring culture, art and collective memory.
One of the festival’s biggest events takes place Sept. 12 at the Fleck Dance Theatre at Harbourfront Centre, where CaribbeanTales will celebrate the 89th birthday of former MP and community leader Dr. Jean Augustine. The evening includes the Canadian premiere of Queen of Soca, a Trinidad and Tobago drama about a young singer who defies her religious mother to pursue a career in soca music.
The festival concludes Sept. 13 with programmes centred on everyday Caribbean life, ancestral knowledge, fatherhood and musical legacies, followed by its awards ceremony.
Yohannes said festivals such as CaribbeanTales create access to audiences, community and industry relationships while giving filmmakers space to discuss their work. However, she believes Toronto’s film sector still needs stronger systems to help Black filmmakers build sustainable careers.
“There has to be an infrastructure to support filmmakers,” she said. “There needs to be more infrastructure in terms of distribution, access to distribution, [and] more funding opportunities that don’t have barriers for filmmakers.”
Most screenings will take place at Dundas West Studio, located at 837 Dundas St. W. Festival passes and individual tickets are available through the CaribbeanTales website.
