Toronto Film Festival programmers have unveiled their annual list of the best Canadian films of the year.
The 24th annual selection of Canadian movies offers up fictional films and documentaries by emerging and established directors, including David Cronenberg, Matthew Rankin, Guy Maddin and Kaniehtiio Horn.
TIFF programmers each year manage to showcase homegrown indie pics by putting them up against Hollywood and other foreign heavyweight movies during the annual September event. So the Canada’s Top Ten selections allow the festival to return in early 2025 to celebrate Canadian films on their own.
“This year’s Canada’s Top Ten celebrates the very best of Canadian cinema, showcasing the bold artistry of Canada’s most celebrated filmmakers and the fresh perspectives of emerging voices,” said Anita Lee, Chief Programming Officer, TIFF. “The selection reflects Canada’s eclectic cultural landscape and a renaissance in risk-taking cinema.”
The latest Canada’s Top Ten selections will screen at Bell Lightbox in Toronto.
Here’s the top Canadian feature films of 2024, as chosen by film pickers at TIFF:
1. Universal Language
Director Matthew Rankin’s absurdist comedy earned an audience prize for the best film in the Directors’ Fortnight section of the Cannes film festival, and his film has been shortlisted in the best international feature category at the Academy Awards. The film in the Farsi and French languages is an offbeat homage to Iranian cinema that takes place in the Canadian cities of Montreal and Winnipeg, and Rankin reimagines a Canada where Farsi is now a dominant tongue.
2. The Shrouds
David Cronenberg’s body horror flick stars Vincent Cassel as Karsh, a businessman overwhelmed with grief at the death of his wife who builds a device — a high-tech shroud — to watch her body decompose in real-time. But one night, multiple graves, including that of Karsh’s wife, are desecrated and Karsh looks to track down the perpetrators.
3. Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story
The SXSW documentary by directors Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee, and executive produced by Elliot Page, uncovers how the pioneering American transgender R&B singer Jackie Shane packed Toronto nightclubs in the 1960s, only to vanish in 1971 for a life of privacy and solitude on her own terms.
Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story
4. Can I Get a Witness?
Director Ann-Marie Fleming’s sci-fi thriller, starring Sandra Oh, is set in the near future in which, to save the planet, death is everyone’s job. And while 50-year-olds make the sacrifice, teenage artists have to document the deaths in the live action and animated feature.
5. Seeds
Reservation Dogs and Letterkenny actor Kaniehtiio Horn was tired of not being handed a movie lead role, so she directed her first feature that weaves her Mohawk roots into a genre-bending home invasion comedy. Amid all the laughs, there’s a deeper message about a family battling evil from Big Ag corporations.
6. Rumours
Directors Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson satirize the ineffectual meagerness of global summits and draft resolutions in their Cannes-premiering romp. The dark comedy stars Alicia Vikander, Cate Blanchett, Charles Dance, Rolando Ravello and Takehiro Hira. The indie was also Maddin’s first film to be officially programming in Cannes.
Rumours
7. 40 Acres
Director R.T. Thorne’s survival thriller in the English and Cree languages stars Danielle Deadwyler as a fiercely protective mother fighting to keep her family safe in a famine-decimated world. The indie drama serves as an allegory for current political and economic issues in the age of Black Lives Matter, food insecurity and Indigenous land rights.
8. Matt and Mara
Director Kazik Radwanski’s character drama stars Deragh Campbell as Mara, a young professor struggling through marriage, only to meet Matt, played by Matt Johnson, a man from her past who wanders onto her university campus. The film reteams Campbell and Johnson, who starred in Radwanski’s Anne at 13,000 Ft.
9. Paying For It
Director and co-writer Sook-Yin Lee’s comedy follows an introverted cartoonist and his girlfriend looking to reshape their relationship by having him sleep with sex workers, only to discover a new kind of intimacy in the process. The indie starring Dan Beirne, Emily Le and Andrea Werhun adapted the graphic novel by Chester Brown.
Paying For It
10. Shepherds
Director Sophie Deraspe’s French language drama follows Mathyas, a Montreal copywriter, becoming a sheep shepherd in the French Alps. He’s joined by Elise, a civil servant who has abruptly quit her own job, and gives Mathyas’ journey a new direction. Together, with around 800 sheep to herd, they define a new way to live on a mountainside.
Shepherds
English (US) ·