WorkCabin Films Gets Two Official Selections at Fresh Coast Film Festival
A pair of WorkCabin Films documentaries, The Bird House and Saving The Night Caller | Uncovering Echoes in The Dark, have been announced as Official Selections for the Fresh Coast Film Festival October 16-19, 2025 in Marquette, Michigan.
WorkCabin Films is one of only three Canadian filmmakers to make the cut at this year’s festival.
Founded in 2016, the Fresh Coast Film Festival is a weekend-long, in-person documentary film festival celebrating the outdoor lifestyle, water-rich environment and resilient spirit of the Great Lakes and Upper Midwest. The festival gathers the best in environmental and cultural filmmaking from around the world while creating a venue for, and building a culture of Great Lakes storytelling. It’s a full in-person experience built around four days of screenings, filmmaker panels, guided outdoor excursions, and community events. The festival has earned a reputation for curating films that explore the ways people and place are connected. For storytellers working in conservation, that makes it a natural fit.
“It’s not about accolades, but what it represents,” said filmmaker Gregg McLachlan. “It has been a decade of quietly putting in the work, learning, and growing as a filmmaker. To have the opportunity to shine a spotlight on stories we care deeply about, on this scale at Fresh Coast, among such a Great Lakes community feels like the greatest reward of all.”
McLachlan and WorkCabin Films co-producer Cynthia Brink will be attending the festival, networking events, screenings, panels, and community events.
“This is such an exciting time, not just with Fresh Coast, but for what’s ahead,” Brink said. “WorkCabin Films has some really meaningful stories on the horizon, and moments like this remind me why I started down this path in the first place.”
For filmmakers, a selection at Fresh Coast means more than a laurel on a poster. It’s the chance to see films experienced at a real film festival in the way they were intended: in a theatre, with an audience, followed by conversation. For audiences, it means stories are brought to life not only on screen, but also through direct engagement with filmmakers, speakers, and the surrounding Great Lakes environment.
What stands out about Fresh Coast is its atmosphere. Films are shown in local theaters and venues, not streamed on a computer at home. Audiences gather together, share reactions, and ask questions. Filmmakers and conservation voices get to engage directly, not just through the films themselves but in conversations that follow. That kind of setting gives stories room to breathe and resonate.
The Bird House | Wildlife Research On The Edge was filmed over two field seasons spanning three years. The nature film tells the story of the impacts of weather, storms and high water at Canada’s most isolated bird banding and research station in the middle of Lake Erie. The documentary also tells the story of the demise of a historic rustic wood house located at the tip of a 30-kilometre wind-swept sandspit that once housed the families of lighthouse keepers, and later housed biologists and volunteers working at a bird research station.
Saving The Night Caller is a hauntingly beautiful conservation documentary that follows wildlife researchers from Birds Canada and the University of Waterloo deep into the forests of southwestern Ontario, Canada to uncover the mysterious world of the Eastern Whip-poor-will, a nocturnal bird whose call once echoed across the night, and is now slowly falling silent. Through cinematic storytelling, emotional narration, and intimate moments with biologists and conservationists, this film explores what it means to work to save a species most people never see, but will miss when it’s gone.
- WorkCabin Films Gets Two Official Selections at Fresh Coast Film Festival - September 12, 2025
- The Winding Path to Where I Belong - August 12, 2025
- How to Make a Conservation Film That Makes a Difference - July 23, 2025
