Duty/Doubt: Remembrance Day Film Festival
Join us this Remembrance Day for our annual Remembrance Day film fest featuring National Film Board of Canada films that explore the themes of duty and doubt.
The stories told move us beyond the traditional battlefield depictions and explore the human cost, moral dilemmas, and political tensions that affected Canada through a century of conflicts. Topics covered include WWI through the diary and letters of five Canadian soldiers and a nurse, WWII through the lens of the Conscription Crisis and Karelia Fever, the Cold War through the story of Joseph Rotblat, the physicist who walked away from the Manhattan Project to dedicate his life to nuclear disarmament, and the conflicting feelings of Afghan-Canadians in a post-9/11 world.
From the trenches of WWI to modern overseas missions, the films uncover and highlight complex choices that impacted generations of Canadians.
Drop by for just one film, or stay to see them all! Entry by donation.
📅 Wednesday, November 11, 2026
🕚 12 pm - 5 pm
📍 Rossland Museum & Discovery Centre
🎟️ Entry by Donation
Film Schedule:
12:00 pm: Front Lines
12:45 pm: Mackenzie King & The Conscription Crisis
1:20 pm: Letters from Karelia
2:20 pm: The Strangest Dream
4 pm: Good Morning Kandahar
Film Details:
12:00 pm - Front Lines (2008 | 33 min)
A tribute to the combatants in the First World War, this film traces the conflict through the war diary and private letters of five Canadian soldiers and a nurse. Hearing them, the listener detects between the lines an unspoken horror censored by war and propriety. The film mingles war footage, historical photos and readings of excerpts from the diary and letters. The directorial talent of Claude Guilmain breathes life into these 90-year-old documents and accompanying archival images so that we experience the human face and heart of the conflict.
12:45 pm - Mackenzie King & The Conscription Crisis (1991 | 31 min)
From the beginning of the Second World War in 1939, Mackenzie King tried to avoid conscription. Most English Canadians thought young men should be sent to fight, while most French Canadians vehemently disagreed. This same division had nearly torn the country apart during the First World War. King had to make a decision in the final year of the war. This docudrama combines archival footage with excerpts from The King Chronicles, a dramatic series written and directed by Donald Brittain.
** This work deals with mature subject matter. Viewer discretion is advised. **
1:20 pm - Letters from Karelia (2005 | 48 min)
This feature-length documentary sheds light on "Karelia Fever," a phenomenon of the 1930s that led many Finnish Canadians to a tragic fate in the Soviet Union. Taimi Pitkanen last saw her brother Aate in Leningrad in 1931. She was returning to Canada from Moscow while her brother was heading to Soviet Karelia, where his skills as an English-Finnish electrician were in demand. He wrote letters home until 1941, when Hitler attacked the USSR. After that, no one in Canada heard from him. Some 60 years later, letters (written but unmailed) were discovered that revealed his fate and brought together Taimi and Alfred, the son Aate never had a chance to meet. Alfred follows his father's journey from Thunder Bay to Karelia. With him, we learn about Aate and one of the great dreams of the 20th century.
2:20 pm - The Strangest Dream (2008 | 1h 29 min)
This is the story of Joseph Rotblat, the only nuclear scientist to leave the Manhattan Project, the U.S. government’s secret program to build the first atomic bomb. His was a decision based on moral grounds. The film retraces the history of nuclear weapons, from the first test in New Mexico, to Hiroshima, where we see survivors of the first atomic attack. Branded a traitor and spy, Rotblat went from designing atomic bombs to researching the medical uses of radiation. Together with Bertrand Russell he helped create the modern peace movement, and eventually won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Featuring interviews with contemporaries of Rotblat and passionate public figures including Senator Roméo Dallaire, The Strangest Dream demonstrates the renewed threat of nuclear weapons and encourages hope through the example of morally engaged scientists and citizens.
4:00 pm - Good Morning Kandahar (2008 | 48 min)
Ariel Nasr's documentary gives voice to the complex dilemmas faced by contemporary Afghanis under Canadian intervention. The film introduces us to young Afghan-Canadians torn between a deep desire to help Afghanistan and a fear that things will never change. “Good Morning Kandahar” asks whether Canada's mission in Afghanistan is failing.
Veterans Month Exhibits
For November, we will have a display at the RMDC highlighting some of Rossland’s veterans from WWII as well as a display on the Royal Canadian Legion at the Prestige . Stay tuned for more details.
Last year’s rendition of Their Finest Hour at the Museum features five Rosslanders who participated in WWII.