Canada, meet your Top Ten. #SeeTheNorth pic.twitter.com/HVGlL6i3s9
— TIFF (@TIFF_NET) December 9, 2020
When the 2019 TIFF Top 10 list was released, your humble narrator had seen 7 of the 10 films, soon to be joined by the eighth film. The 2020 TIFF Top 10 list? A lot still unknown.
Let's get acquainted with the list of Canadian films. Here is the 2020 Top Ten list with the directors and province of origin:
Beans Tracey Deer | Quebec/Ontario
Fauna Nicolás Pereda | Ontario
Funny Boy Deepa Mehta | Ontario
Inconvenient Indian Michelle Latimer | Ontario
Judy Versus Capitalism Mike Hoolboom | Ontario
The Kid Detective Evan Morgan | Ontario
Nadia, Butterfly Pascal Plante | Quebec
The Nest Sean Durkin | Ontario
No Ordinary Man Aisling Chin-Yee, Chase Joynt | Quebec
Possessor Brandon Cronenberg | Ontario
Beans; Fauna; Inconvenient Indian; and No Ordinary Man played at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival. All but Fauna were "pure Canadian"; 3 of the 5 "pure Canadian" films that played at TIFF made the list. Fauna (Mexico) and The Nest (UK) are co-productions.
I pride myself on keeping track and several of these films were not on my radar. Judy Versus Capitalism is a documentary that takes a look at the life of feminist, activist, and journalist Judy Rebick. The Kid Detective stars American actor Adam Brody as a former teen detective with a chance to solve his first case as an adult. The film features Canadian talent such as Sophie Nélisse, Wendy Crewson, Peter MacNeill, Maurice Dean Wint, and Sarah Sutherland.
The Nest doesn't qualify as "visibly Canadian" unless you count Canadian actors such as Wendy Crewson and Tattiawna Jones, who are not high on the call list. You already know about Funny Boy, Canada's entry to the Academy Awards for Best International Feature Film.
Combing through the TIFF Top 10 Canadian film lists of the 2010s
2020 TIFF wrapup
2020 TIFF preview
2020 TIFF Canadian film preview
Nadia, Butterfly, the only Canadian film to make the list at Cannes, is the (shockingly) only French-Canadian film on the list. The 2019 list had 3 French-Canadian films: And the Birds Rained Down; Antigone; and Matthias et Maxime.
The 2020 list doesn't include a single film outside of Ontario and Quebec.
Inconvenient Indian; Judy Versus Capitalism; and No Ordinary Man are documentaries.
4 films were directed or co-directed by women. There are 6 filmmakers of colour with 3 Indigenous filmmakers.
Your humble narrator has sadly seen only a single film on this list: Funny Boy. In ranking the films by interest, the top 5 would be Beans; Nadia, Butterfly; Inconvenient Indian; Judy Versus Capitalism; and The Kid Detective.
Fauna is the first film on this list in Spanish since Roads in February | Les routes en février (2018). The 2020 list has a film in Spanish, Tamil, and only one in French. Seriously. Fine for the other languages but only one in French? J'accuse. Mon dieu.
The other question is when will Canadians and those trapped below the 49th parallel get a chance to see these films. Possessor and The Nest are now playing at TIFF’s Digital Cinema and on demand in the United States. The U.S. audience will get to see Trickster from Michelle Latimer before seeing Inconvenient Indian.
CanadianCrossing.com film coverage
You can find out more about the features as well as shorts on the Top 10 list. We are curious about the potential distribution of the TIFF Top Ten list every year, but particularly from 2020.
Twitter capture: @TIFF_NET
photo credit: Beans film
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