TIFF announces Canada’s Top Ten

The Toronto International Film Festival’s celebration of the best works of the year made by Canadians is an annual event that has brought recognition to the largely ignored homegrown talent who work hard to keep the Canadian film industry alive.

The biggest surprise on the list has to be the grindhouse film Hobo with a Shotgun, which started as a winning trailer for Robert Rodriguez’s Grindhouse trailers contest, earning a spot as the trailer before the 2007 film. From that win, director Jason Eisner was able to get the film made, but no one would have expected the refined taste of the TIFF panelists to let this gruesome genre piece make the cut.

As usual, Quebec’s French cinema made up the bulk of the best films on the list.

An obvious choice was Jean-Marc Vallee’s Cafe de Flore. The gorgeously told story of two lives intersecting through a song earned my top spot at the festival this year.

The endearing Monsieur Lazhar also made the list, and is Canada’s official submission for consideration in the Oscar’s foreign language category.

Guy Edoin’s Marécages, Sébastien Pilote’s Le Vendeur and Ken Scott’s hilarious Starbuck – which was runner up for the Audience Award at TIFF – rounded out the Quebec selections.

David Cronenberg’s film about Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud and the birth of psychoanalysis – A Dangerous Method, made the list along with Sarah Polley’s Toronto shot look into an affair – Take This Waltz.

Guy Maddin’s creepy black and white film Keyhole and Nathan Morlando’s Edwin Boyd – which already won Best Canadian First Feature at TIFF – earned the final spots.

There was some surprise that none of the great Canadian made documentaries of the year such as Weibo’s War, The National Parks Project, or Beauty Day made the list, but as usual short films were not ignored, with the short form Top Ten showcasing the work of many upcoming directors such as Andrew Cividino (We Ate the Children Last), Igor Drljaca (The Fuse: Or How I Burned Simon Bolivar) and Ian Harnarine who won Best Canadain Short at TIFF for Doubles With Slight Pepper. 

All the selected films will screen at TIFF Bell Lightbox in January – see the schedule here.

Watch the trailers for the films below:

Hobo with a Shotgun

Cafe de Flore

Monsieur Lazhar

Take This Waltz

A Dangerous Method

Starbuck

Edwin Boyd

Keyhole

Le Vendeur

Marecages

What do you think of the choices? Did they miss anything that should have made the cut?

Source: TIFF.net

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