This isn't quite the TIFF Top 10 Canadian films, but Canadians in a few major cities will be able to see some of the Canadian Screen Awards nominees in an actual movie theatre.
The screenings of 5 films will start on Saturdays during March. The Canadian cities for the screenings are Toronto, Montréal, Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, St. John's, and Iqaluit.
Here are the Canadian films for the screenings:
March 2 Just a Breath Away | Dans la brume
March 9 Immaculate Memories: The Uncluttered Worlds of Christopher Pratt
March 16 Sashinka
March 23 What Walaa Wants
March 30 (March 29 in Toronto) Stockholm
Only 2 of the 5 have significant Canadian content on the screen. The initial film is the only entry for Best Motion Picture. If I were in one of those Canadian cities, I might pick a couple and watch.
The major criticisms of the Best Motion Picture nominees were that no one had seen the films (only Genesis | Genèse had played in a theatre outside of this festival) and that none of the nominees were in English.
Comparing the Canadian Screen Awards to the Academy Awards is unfair. Part of the fun with the Oscars is that even if you haven't seen a film, someone else in your group has seen the film.
Schitt's Creek, Anne with an E lead TV nominations for 2019 Canadian Screen Awards
Chien de Garde fails to make Oscars shortlist
I've seen 1 of the 5 Best Motion Picture nominees and that was a dreadful film. If I were rooting for a Best Motion Picture nominee, I would select The Great Darkened Days | La grande noirceur mostly because director Maxime Giroux also did Felix and Meira.
Roman Duris is not nominated for The Great Darkened Days | La grande noirceur and Just a Breath Away | Dans la brume but I would see a film because he is in the cast. I know I've seen more films with Roman Duris than all my friends combined.
Beth Janson, chief executive of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, which administers the CSAs, said in an interview that the films were curated films for a specific audience "films that have a broad appeal, because if you put your most challenging content first, you’re not going to catch as many people."
This is a nice symbolic gesture with the emphasis on symbolic, a pebble in Lake Ontario. The pebble is nice and shiny.
TIFF selects Top 10 Canadian films of 2018
CanadianCrossing.com film coverage
This is the part when I talk about which films I have seen. I haven't seen any of these films. I had to look up 2 titles.
I've seen 3 of the TIFF Top 10 Canadian films from 2018. What Walaa Wants is the only film on the Top 10 that is a part of this festival. If I can't keep up, I can't imagine most Canadians will try as hard as I do. Then again, if I lived in Toronto, I could add 5 more films in March.
The Canadian Screen Awards ceremony will air on March 31 on CBC. You can find out more details on the screenings.
photo credit: Canadian Screen Awards
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.