Save the date! Grab some bubbly and your bestie and join us here on Sunday, Dec. 15 @ noon EST as we announce the winners and runners-up of the #TFCAawards, plus the nominees for the @Rogers Best Canadian Film and Best Canadian Documentary Awards. 🏆 pic.twitter.com/F55AREm1Xd
— Toronto Film Critics 🍿 (@TFCA) October 16, 2024
December is a good time to get a sense of the year 2024 in Canadian films. TIFF should be announcing the Top 10 feature and short Canadian films this week. That will be a separate story. The excitement is wondering how many titles we have already seen. Would imagine that Universal Language and Shepherds, both major TIFF winners in September, will be on the list.
The Toronto Film Critics Association hand out the rest of the winners on December 15 yet only the finalists for Rogers Best Canadian Film, feature and documentary. The TFCA added the latter category last year.
The TFCA will announce those winners on February 24. Something to look forward to knowing before the Academy Awards.
2024 WIFF Canadian films in review
Why New Brunswick is mostly absent from Canadian film landscape
We noted 2 recent films in the 2024 Windsor International Film Festival had ties to New Brunswick, a province that has little representation in the Canadian film landscape. Do I Know You from Somewhere and Drive Back Home were the film titles.
Do I Know You from Somewhere involves a lot of indoor intimate space and is an unconventional film. There is some actual outdoor footage in New Brunswick. This was a thoughtful film and a perspective that was unfamiliar. If New Brunswick had some influence, then we want to see more.
Drive Back Home was a period piece and a road trip film that theoretically spent more time out of New Brunswick than in the province. The film's beginning and ending was in New Brunswick and had a physical place in Stanley, near Fredericton, the provincial capital. Stanley is about 40 km (25 miles) north of Fredericton.
This film takes place in 1970, shortly after New Brunswick enacted its first Official Languages Act on April 18, 1969. The Act set the official languages — English and French — with the idea that those in New Brunswick to receive services in either official language from the provincial government.
This doesn't mean everyone in New Brunswick is bilingual. Weldon (Charlie Creed-Miles) deliberately drives around Montréal to get to Toronto to pick up his brother because he doesn't speak French. The largest city in Quebec in 1970 was quite anglophone as compared to now but that ignorance — c'est normal for that time and place.
Both films are very good in their own ways. Glad to have more films with a New Brunswick presence on the Canadian film landscape.
You can find the Twitter thread to see more answers to this significant question. David Cronenberg and Atom Egoyan are gateway Canadian filmmakers, like casual film fans judge Canada based on more prominent filmmakers. Perhaps Xavier Dolan on the Quebec side of the conversation. Even Guy Maddin for those who know film.
Patricia Rozema and LĂ©a Pool are classic female Canadian filmmakers. Monica Chokri and Molly McGlynn are more recent examples of quality female Canadian filmmakers.
Canadian film doesn't get much publicity, even as we try and shout from the proverbial rooftops. We tend to focus more on quieter, more invisible films. Our answer fell within 280 characters but that answer sums up our thoughts on Canadian film rather succinctly.
Hopefully, our coverage can expand your perception of Canadian cinema, even within English Canada.
Canadian film notebook: Santa Barbara film festival has limited Denis Villeneuve retrospective
TIFF will have a rare screening of August 32nd on Earth
Canadian film review: August 32nd on Earth
Looking ahead, Villeneuve's ambition remains boundless. While he is committed to completing his "Dune" trilogy with "Messiah," which is set to begin shooting in 2025, he's also open to exploring other genres — even, surprisingly, comedy. When asked if he would ever consider a lighter project, he chuckles. "Funny enough, my first feature was a kind of dark sci-fi rom-com about the end of the world. I was laughing out loud while writing it, but everyone who read it found it depressing. Maybe I'm not the right person for comedy. Maybe Yorgos Lanthimos can make it," he jokes. For now, the screenplay remains tucked away, awaiting the right moment — or perhaps the right director — to bring it to life.
This excerpt from a recent Variety interview with Denis Villeneuve gave us some insight into his forgotten films, especially outside Quebec.
August 32nd on Earth | Un 32 août sur terre is the "dark sci-fi rom-com about the end of the world" that Villeneuve mentions. Variety doesn't mention the title of the film, which would seem relevant to the conversation. Your humble narrator doesn't think the film is as funny as Villeneuve thinks it is but there is humour to situations.
Villeneuve has adapted the screenplays for the Dune series of films but otherwise hasn't written a single film from an original idea since Incendies (2010). Enemy (2013) was technically a Canadian film but that is the only Canadian film of his that he didn't write.
Villeneuve wrote and directed August 32nd on Earth | Un 32 août sur terre as well as Maelström (2000), Polytechnique (2009), and Incendies (2010).
On comedy and film, the film where I laughed the most out loud in a theatre as an adult was Dogtooth from Yorgos Lanthimos. Lanthimos, like Villeneuve, is getting a lot of acclaim for films where he is directing, not writing (not counting Villeneuve's adapted screenplays). Lanthimos wrote and directed Dogtooth and The Lobster.
Available to stream for free on https://t.co/WP8hpIZzxA and the #NFB Films app, Alanis Obomsawin's KANEHSATAKE, 270 YEARS OF RESISTANCE and Zacharias Kunuk's ATANARJUAT: THE FAST RUNNER are among @TIME's list of 22 essential #Indigenous films! 🧡 https://t.co/OsjYFKQzq1
— National Film Board of Canada (@thenfb) November 11, 2024
Not too surprising that Canada has a heavy influence in Time magazine's list of 22 essential Indigenous films. Canada makes a lot of good ones, way more than the United States. We don't generally recommend a film because of its Indigenous content. We like good films, some of which has Indigenous content.
Your humble narrator has seen Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993); Smoke Signals (1998); Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001); Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013); Sami Blood (2016); Blood Quantum (2019); The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open (2019); Beans (2020); and Night Raiders (2021). All but Sami Blood are Canadian. Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers is Sami on her father's side.
CanadianCrossing.com film coverage
CanadianCrossing.com film reviews
We have some good news in reference to Hot Docs. After a lot of uncertainty, there will be programming at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema as of December 4. The Hot Docs Festival will run from April 24-May 4 in 2025.
We hope to find out at the end of the week about the TIFF Top 10 of 2024. That will be another story when the lists arrive.
Twitter captures: @TFCA; @thenfb
photo credit: Do I Know You from Somewhere; @SophyRomvari
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