Norm Wilner, Senior International Programmer, Canada, gives you a taste of the debut Canadian features in the #TIFF24 “Discovery section that are very important to us.” pic.twitter.com/LbIpV6av74
— TIFF (@TIFF_NET) July 24, 2024
The Toronto International Film Festival may not put Canadian films in the spotlight of Opening Night or even Closing Night. The festival is a great source of Canadian films that are new and hopefully to be found in theatres, even in Canada.
Let's start with the Centrepiece films in the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, which were announced last week. Universal Language | Une Langue Universelle from Matthew Rankin sparkled at Cannes this year. The film has a shot at being the Best Canadian Film at TIFF 2024 and Telefilm Canada's nominee to the Academy Awards for Best International Feature Film.
This is Rankin's second feature film. His debut, The Twentieth Century, was TIFF's last winner for Best Canadian First Feature Film in 2019.
Deragh Campbell is what we would call an actor's actor, one appreciated by fellow thespians. Campbell stars in 2 films at TIFF 2024. Kazik Radwanski, who featured Campbell in Anne at 13,000 Feet, is back with a romantic dramedy Matt and Mara, co-starring BlackBerry actor and director Matt Johnson.
Campbell has also worked with Sofia Bohdanowicz and they are reunited in Measures for a Funeral. We recently reviewed Bohdanowicz's earlier film, Maison du Bonheur.
David Cronenberg and Guy Madden have new films at TIFF 2024. Madden's film stars Cate Blanchett.
Rogers is the new presenting sponsor for TIFF, replacing Bell in that role. The theatre is now known as the TIFF Lightbox. There really aren't that many companies in Canada that can sponsor the arts on a high level.
Here are 5 other Canadian films where we are paying extra attention:
Ann Marie Fleming is back with her first full-length feature since 2016: Window Horses: The Poetic Persian Epiphany of Rosie Ming. Can I Get a Witness? with a mix of live action and animation. The idea of not being able to live past 50 has an updated Logan's Run feel. Sandra Oh voiced the protagonist in the 2016 film and is featured in the cast of the new film.
Sophie Deraspe mostly impressed us with Antigone (2019) and is back with Shepherds | Bergers about a Montréal copywriter starting a new chapter as a sheep herder in the French Alps.
We are always pleased when an actor we like and respect goes into writing and directing. Kaniehtiio Horn has her debut film Seeds at TIFF 24 with a thriller with Kanienʼkehá꞉ka connections.
Arianna Martinez is an unknown yet Do I Know You From Somewhere? has great potential to blow our minds (in a good way). A couple finds themselves losing their history. This is reportedly the first New Brunswick film to premiere at TIFF in over a decade. We wrote earlier this year about how underrepresented that province is in the world of Canadian film.
40 Acres from R.T. Thorne offers food shortages, a Black family in Canada, and cannibalism.
The full schedule is out today. Let's look at all the Canadian feature-length films coming to the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival.
Matt and Mara is a Toronto film through and through. It would not have been possible to make this without our incredible cast, crew, collaborators, friends, family and community. Can’t wait to finally share it with everyone and have a hometown screening at TIFF. pic.twitter.com/DkpZxAzT5v
— Kazik Radwanski (@redvineski) August 7, 2024
Centrepiece
Matt and Mara (Kazik Radwanski) Struggling with a new baby and a distracted husband, an academic is more than happy to hang out with a college pal who crashes back into her life. But what sort of relationship are they resuming, precisely?
Measures for a Funeral (Sofia Bohdanowicz) The film brilliantly spotlights a young academic’s run towards one woman — acclaimed early 20th-century Canadian violinist Kathleen Parlow — as she simultaneously flees from another, her failed musician mother.
Sweet Angel Baby (Melanie Oates) Eliza is an unassuming and beloved member of a small fishing community in Newfoundland who sees all of her relationships put in jeopardy after her secret social media persona is exposed.
The Mother and the Bear (Johnny Ma) Canada, Chile | When her grown daughter Sumi has a bad fall in Winnipeg, anxious widow Sara (Kim Ho-jung) travels from Korea to be with her — and discovers she doesn't really know Sumi at all.
Universal Language | Une Langue Universelle (Matthew Rankin) Matthew Rankin’s second feature is a lovingly detailed, charmingly impossible story of a Canada where Persian and French are the two official languages, and loneliness is the common currency.
Platform
Paying For It (Sook-Yin Lee) Canadian filmmaker, musician, and actor Sook-Yin Lee connects the past with the present, bringing together Canadian underground artists and innovative cross-generational musicians in a cultural snapshot of turn-of-the-millennium Toronto in Paying For It. With subtle comic energy and a great cast, this adaptation of Chester Brown’s autobiographical 2011 graphic novel is a movie only Lee could make … because it’s her story, too.
NEW: Lots of intriguing Canadian titles getting their world premieres as part of #TIFF24 Discovery program, including first-time feature films from @amarwala, @durgapolashi and @KNAAN. pic.twitter.com/6xnDXUdU9E
— Barry Hertz (@HertzBarry) July 24, 2024
Discovery
Aberdeen (Ryan Cooper, Eva Thomas) A tour-de-force performance by Gail Maurice (Bones of Crows, TIFF ’22) sees her inhabit the role of Aberdeen, a woman who must rise above hardships to save her grandkids, and herself.
Bonjour Tristesse (Durga Chew-Bose) Canada, Germany | Durga Chew-Bose’s adaptation of Françoise Sagan’s unforgettable coming-of-age novel of the same name, is a sun-soaked heralding of a singular artist.
Do I Know You From Somewhere? (Arianna Martinez) A committed couple finds their life slipping away, not because they’ve done anything in particular, but because their history is unwriting itself. Sort of.
Really Happy Someday (J Stevens) A rising musical-theatre star before his transition, Z (Breton Lalama) has to figure out how to sing in his new register in order to return to the thing he loves most — and, in the process, integrate his past and present selves.
Seeds (Kaniehtiio Horn) Kaniehtiio Horn (Alice, Darling, TIFF ’22) wrote, directed, and stars in this tense thriller that weaves Kanienʼkehá꞉ka connections to the land with a cat-and-mouse game.
Shook (Amar Wala) Struggling Scarborough writer Ashish is thrown for several loops when he falls for flinty barista Claire and learns his estranged father has just been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, in Amar Wala’s first dramatic feature.
Village Keeper (Karen Chapman) After her husband’s murder, an overwhelmed Toronto mother discovers a very unusual way to process her grief. With her first dramatic feature, writer-director Karen Chapman creates an emotionally authentic study of a single mother trying to hold herself together in the face of unimaginable loss.
You Are Not Alone | Vous n'êtes pas seuls (Marie-Hélène Viens, Philippe Lupien) In Montréal, twentysomething Léo (Pier-Luc Funk) delivers pizza and gets drunk, and that’s pretty much it. He’s alone and he’s sad, and doing nothing about it … until he meets Rita (Marianne Fortier), a sweet-natured musician who thinks he might be a keeper. The thing is, Léo is already taken; he’s just been targeted by an alien (François Papineau) who preys on Montreal’s lonely and alienated men and doesn’t much care if Léo’s luck has turned.
Galas
The Shrouds (David Cronenberg) | Canada/France | Still grieving the loss of his wife, a technological entrepreneur (Vincent Cassel) finds what’s left of his world collapsing into a nightmare of sex, paranoia, and grief in David Cronenberg’s most personal film.
#TIFFTribute Jury Chair Sandra Oh stars in Ann Marie Fleming’s CAN I GET A WITNESS? which will have its World Premiere at #TIFF24.
— TIFF (@TIFF_NET) July 22, 2024
The film also stars Keira Jang and Joel Oulette.https://t.co/CTPQX2f7Ld pic.twitter.com/oJWQDNwWsG
Special Presentations
40 Acres (R.T. Thorne) In a post-apocalyptic future where food is scarce, the last descendants of a Black family of farmers who settled in Canada after the American Civil War must protect their homestead from a band of hungry cannibals.
Can I Get a Witness? (Ann Marie Fleming) Keira Jang, Joel Oulette, and Sandra Oh star in this introspective live-action and animated feature set in the near future when technology and travel are almost completely banned, and nobody is allowed to live past age 50.
Rumours (Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson) Canada/Germany | Cate Blanchett (The New Boy, TIFF ’23) joins a strong ensemble cast and plays the German chancellor in an absurd satire of a G7 world leaders meeting that spins wildly out of control — the latest from co-directors Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson.
Sharp Corner (Jason Buxton) Canada/Ireland | After a car crashes into his front yard, a family man develops an unhealthy obsession with being ready for the next accident. And the next.
Shepherds | Bergers (Sophie Deraspe) Canada/France | A Montréal copywriter sets out to reinvent himself as a sheep herder in the French Alps despite knowing literally nothing about the centuries-old craft, in this adaptation from director and co-writer Sophie Deraspe.
Young Werther (José Avelino Gilles Corbett Lourenço) Inspired by the popular 1770s novella The Sorrows of Young Werther, this modernization stars Douglas Booth and Alison Pill in a fast-paced and bright romantic comedy, set in Toronto.
#TIFF24 World Premiere: Sophie Deraspe’s SHEPHERDS starring Félix-Antoine Duval and Solène Rigot.https://t.co/ItvCyAaJqm pic.twitter.com/nLeHkKK21r
— TIFF (@TIFF_NET) July 22, 2024
Primetime
The Knowing (Courtney Montour, Tanya Talaga) Acclaimed journalist Tanya Talaga brings her evocative storytelling from the page to the screen with her search for a long-lost matriarch named Annie, solving an 80-year-old family mystery.
The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal (Mike Downie) Director Mike Downie assembles The Tragically Hip for an emotional look at the origin, impact, and legacy of the band that defined Canada, to the world and to itself.
#TIFF24 World Premiere: Mike Downie’s THE TRAGICALLY HIP: NO DRESS REHEARSAL starring @thetragicallyhip, Gord Downie, Gord Sinclair, Rob Baker, Paul Langlois, and Johnny Fay.https://t.co/sOOzGcKkRs pic.twitter.com/JOgVfMviGr
— TIFF (@TIFF_NET) August 9, 2024
Wavelengths
Lázaro at Night | Lázaro de noche (Nicolás Pereda) Canada/Mexico | In the sly and pleasurable Lázaro at Night from prolific Mexican Canadian auteur Nicolás Pereda, a love triangle between three actors elicits a reflection on the different roles one plays and the interplay between desire and realism.
Rhayne Vermette has a short film in this category: A Black Screen Too. Vermette's last full-length film was Ste. Anne, which somehow won Best Canadian Film at TIFF 2021.
Documentaries
Living Together | Cohabiter (Halima Elkhatabi) Halima Elkhatabi's disarming documentary eavesdrops on dozens of Montréalers as they interview one another in the hopes of finding a roommate they won’t want to change the locks on after a week.
Men of War (Jen Gatien, Billy Corben) USA/Canada | “Rambo meets Fyre Fest” could be the pitch for this tragicomedy about American-trained mercenaries who try to overthrow the Venezuelan government.
Russians at War (Anastasia Trofimova) Canada/France | Russian-Canadian filmmaker Anastasia Trofimova's gripping first-person documentary takes us beyond the headlines to join Russian soldiers in Ukraine placing themselves in harm’s way for reasons that become only more obscure with each gruelling day.
So Surreal: Behind the Masks (Neil Diamond, Joanne Robertson) So Surreal: Behind the Mask unveils the fascinating connection between the work of famed Surrealist artists and ceremonial masks from the Yup’ik and Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw nations, and follows the quest to bring them home.
The Freedom of Fierro (Santiago Esteinou) Mexico/Canada/Greece | At 63, newly freed César Fierro must rebuild his life after being wrongfully convicted in Texas 40 years earlier. In this documentary, the audience accompanies Fierro on his journey, observing his often painful transition back into society.
Your Tomorrow (Ali Weinstein) Ali Weinstein's documentary captures the final year of Ontario Place as we know it, as the celebrated provincial park is sectioned off for redevelopment and concerned citizens do their best to save it.
Classics
Masala (Srinivas Krishna)
The Sweet Hereafter (Atom Egoyan)
Special Anniversary Screenings
Double Happiness (Mina Shum)
2023 TIFF wrapup
2023 TIFF leftovers
2023 TIFF preview
2023 TIFF Rising Stars
2023 TIFF Canadian film preview
Matthew Rankin's new film was a highlight at Cannes 2024
Canadian film notebook: Évelyne Brochu gets caught in a love triangle in French Girl
CanadianCrossing.com film coverage
We will update this story if more Canadian films are added. The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs September 5-15.
Twitter captures: @TIFF_NET; @redvineski; @HertzBarry; @TIFF_NET (x3)
photo credits: Matt and Mara; Seeds
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