Available Light 2026 Short Film, Short Review: MY KNITTING CIRCLE

Perhaps the most cozy short film on the festival circuit this year, My Knitting Circle puts on the kettle for a cup of tea and surveys the fibrous wares and spinning equipment of Itsy-Bitsy Yarn Store. A small group of friends gather to make clothes, tell stories, share laughs, and bathe in the short-days of limited natural light from the shops big windows. Their hands move linear fabric across smooth needles with intention and grace.

While I personally do not knit or crochet, in the same way I do not gamble or smoke, on screen, the craft (surprisingly) provides a similar tactile energy and visual rhythms as those more sinful activities so often take up space on the big screen. Precise, but not too showy, tracking and macro shots capture this in a way that is eminently satisfying; all bouncing balls of yarn and spinning fibres, where stacks of spun raw materials are piled and tucked away that is simultaneous neat and cluttered. This colourful b-roll provides a gateway, or a platform, for the short film’s most charming revelation: If you gather a bunch of introverts and put them in their happy-space, and give them something to do with their hands, they will show how effortlessly witty and appealing they can be.


The director Alexandra Knowles is a young woman who has moved several times, post graduation, to re-invent herself in different places. Like many Canadians, she came up north to get away, and then never left. Her story seems to fit a theme in the sparsely populated Territories - people come to escape, and then settle permanently in one of the various small communities after finding many likeminded folks. One of her fellow knitters, Sarah, sold her French horn for a one way ticket to Whitehorse and a couple months rent, and as she puts it, “It all worked out.”

Knowles particular ‘life hack’ of moving to a new place is to find the nearest yarn shop and join the local knitting circle. Small towns that can be insular and challenging to make friends, particularly for the introvert set. Her circle of Ezra, Heather, Nicole, Alex, and Sarah, offer small talk, warm banter, and maybe a hint of local gossip as they work side by side. My Knitting Circle offers something rarely captured on camera: What the quietest of belonging and happiness looks like. It does so without too much fuss, where soundtrack, somewhat ironically, emphasizes how “trivial these things are.” This belies just how profound this sort of human interface actually is. Cliche or not, it is the little things, a smile and an inviting wave into someone’s personal space, that fuel a rich life.

[My Knitting Circle, will be available to watch online at The National Film Board of Canada on February 19, 2026.]