Mandate & Mission Statement

Global Visions Film Festival is Canada’s oldest documentary film festival.  We operate from the knowledge that the world is getting smaller, and that all people are interconnected, interdependent citizens of the global village. 

Global Visions Film Festival aims to entertain, engage and inspire our audience.  We entertain them by bringing original, top-quality documentaries made by talented filmmakers from across Canada and around the world to Edmonton every year.  We engage our audiences by challenging them through our films to think about their place in the world, and their shared responsibility to the planet, meaning everyone and everything that lives upon it.  And we inspire them by showing our audience that documentary film and filmmakers can help make a positive, transformative change in people’s lives. 

Our History

The Global Visions Film Festival (GVFF) is an annual, one of a kind, Edmonton based festival which celebrates the work of passionate, accomplished documentarians from Canada and around the world. Through the work of Canadian and international filmmakers, GVFF celebrates the passion of film and the diversity, joy, and responsibility of being a global citizen. 



We began 28 years ago as the Edmonton Learners Centre's Third World Film Festival. The centre became a non-profit society -The Global Visions Festival Society- in 1998 which organizes and runs the Global Visions Film Festival.

GVFF draws it's strength from enthusiastic, dedicated, grassroots community supporters, patrons and volunteers. Over the years nearly 80 thousand people have taken part in this event and our audience continues to grow.

The festival runs annually over four days in November in Edmonton's Downtown Arts District. In addition to dozens of films we present public workshops and panel discussions with filmmakers,  as well as our popular Youth Media Arts Day for young filmmakers.

In 2009 we began a partnership with Hot Docs, North America’s largest and most prestigious documentary film festival to present the acclaimed film series Doc Soup.  Doc Soup will run the first Thursday of every month from December 2009 to May 2010.