TIFF 2019: 25 Canadian Films We’re Already Excited About
All photos courtesy of TIFF
The Toronto International Film Festival announced their full slate of Canadian films for TIFF 2019 on Tuesday, a list that shows an attempt to include more Indigenous and female filmmakers.
The subject matter of the Canadian films set for the 44th edition of the fest spans stories from all corners of the country, from the personal and familial to crises facing Indigenous communities and Canadians across the spectrum. Those include Jordan River Anderson, The Messenger, the 53rd film from famed Abenaki filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin, which chronicles a young Indigenous boy’s life in a hospital while his parents and activists clash with the federal government over his care to Louise Archambault’s And the Birds Rained Down, which explores the lives and struggles of a trio of aging Quebec hermits, to Highway to Heaven, from director Sandra Ignagni, documenting a stretch of highway in British Columbia that is home to 25 different places of worship, to Thea Hollatz’s Hot Flash, an animated short about a female newscaster who suffers a hot flash as she’s about to go live on air, and the emotionally exploratory The Physics of Sorrow, from Oscar-nominated animator Theodore Ushev, the first fully animated movie to use the technique of encaustic painting.
We’ve combed through the just-announced Canuck selection for TIFF 2019 and found 25 that we can’t wait to check out at the fest. Those include…
Director: Louise Archambault
TIFF Synopsis: “Acclaimed director Louise Archambault’s elegaic and charming new film depicts three aging hermits in the Quebec countryside whose defiant need to live independently is increasingly endangered by nature, old age, and infirmity.”
Blood Quantum
World Premiere
Category: Opening Night Film/Midnight Madness
Director: Jeff Barnaby
TIFF Synopsis: “Jeff Barnaby’s astutely titled second feature is equal parts horror and pointed cultural critique. Zombies are devouring the world, yet an isolated Mi’gmaq community is immune to the plague. Do they offer refuge to the denizens outside their reserve or not?”
Castle In the Ground
World Premiere
Category: Contemporary World Cinema
Director: Joey Klein
TIFF Synopsis: “Two lost souls — one kicking her habit, one developing his own — befriend each other and grapple with the hard truths of addiction, in Joey Klein’s exploration of the opioid crisis in Canada.”
Clifton Hill
World Premiere
Category: Special Presentations
Director: Albert Shin
TIFF Synopsis: “Tuppence Middleton stars in Albert Shin’s psychological thriller, which follows a troubled young woman returning to her hometown of Niagara Falls, where the memory of a long-ago kidnapping quickly ensnares her.”
Coppers
World Premiere
Category: TIFF Docs
Director: Alan Zweig
TIFF Synopsis: “Award-winning documentarian Alan Zweig returns to the Festival with an honest, hard-hitting, and humane look at the careers of retired police officers, as described in their own words.”
Flood
World Premiere
Category: Short Cuts
Director: Joseph Amenta
TIFF Synopsis: “A queer teenage boy takes his little sister on an adventure through the city for her birthday, but their celebration comes at a cost, in Joseph Amenta’s vital and unflinching drama.”
God’s Nightmares
World Premiere
Category: Short Cuts
Director: Daniel Cockburn
TIFF Synopsis: “In the latest of his idiosyncratic blends of found-film hallucination and metaphysical comedy routine, director Daniel Cockburn imagines the thoughts that rattle through the Almighty’s head late at night, presuming that He has a head at all.”
Highway to Heaven
World Premiere
Category: Short Cuts
Director: Sandra Ignagni
TIFF Synopsis: “A beautifully composed and evocative documentary on the 25 houses of worship that line a single road in Richmond, BC, Sandra Ignagni’s timely study captures the tensions around multiculturalism and cultural diversity in Canada.”
Hot Flash
World Premiere
Category: Short Cuts
Director: Thea Hollatz
TIFF Synopsis: “A newscaster is due to go live on local television in the middle of a hot flash, in Thea Hollatz’s animated comedy about a woman trying to keep her cool when one type of flash leads to another.”
I’ll End Up In Jail
North American Premiere
Category: Short Cuts
Director: Alexandre Dostie
TIFF Synopsis: “A bored stay-at-home mom gets into trouble after speeding away from her small-town life, in this wildly unpredictable, madcap multi-genre effort from Alexandre Dostie (Mutants, Best Canadian Short Film at TIFF ’16).”
Jordan River Anderson, The Messenger
World Premiere
Category: Masters
Director: Alanis Obomsawin
TIFF Synopsis: “Alanis Obomsawin’s remarkable 53rd film documents the story of a young boy forced to spend all five years of his short life in hospital while the federal and provincial governments argued over which was responsible for his care, as well as the long struggle of Indigenous activists to force the Canadian government to enforce “Jordan’s Principle” — the promise that no First Nations children would experience inequitable access to government-funded services again.”
Category: Short Cuts
Director: Renuka Jeyapalan
TIFF Synopsis: “The great Jayne Eastwood gets straight to the heart of the matter in Renuka Jeyapalan’s funny and poignant true-life tale of a very different kind of dog-park encounter.”
Murmur
World Premiere
Category: Discovery
Director: Heather Young
TIFF Synopsis: “An aging, isolated woman ordered to perform community service for a DUI discovers that adopting ailing pets to fill the void in her life can be its own obsession, in Heather Young’s bold debut feature.”
Now Is The Time
World Premiere
Category: Short Cuts
Director: Christopher Auchter
TIFF Synopsis: “A 1969 documentary on the carving and raising of the first Haida totem pole in over a century becomes the springboard for a film that restores fullness and richness to the larger story of a nation’s resurgent identity.”
One Day In the Life of Noah Piugattuk
North American Premiere
Category: Special Events
Director: Zacharias Kunuk
TIFF Synopsis: In 1961, a nomadic Inuit hunter and his band face pressure from a Canadian government official to move to permanent housing, assimilate their children into settler society, and give up their traditional way of life, in the latest film from Zacharias Kunuk (Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner).
Category: Short Cuts
Director: Brandon Cronenberg
TIFF Synopsis: “A psychiatric patient with a brain implant that allows her to relive her dreams finds her reality being encroached upon in unappetizing and surreal ways, in Brandon Cronenberg’s psychedelically retro thriller.”
Tammy’s Always Dying
World Premiere
Category: Contemporary World Cinema
Director: Amy Jo Johnson
TIFF Synopsis: “Actor-turned-director Amy Jo Johnson’s heart-wrenching second feature, starring Felicity Huffman and Anastasia Phillips, depicts a daughter’s attempt to care for her ornery, ailing mother.”
The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open
North American Premiere
Category: Contemporary World Cinema
Director: Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn
TIFF Synopsis: “One woman’s decision to comfort a stranger she finds crying in the street leads to a revealing and powerful conversation between two Indigenous women from very different circumstances, in this poignant collaboration from Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn.”
Category: Short Cuts
Director: Ariane Louis-Seize
TIFF Synopsis: “Looking for solace while staying in her late mother’s cottage, a young woman instead finds her old scuba gear — a fateful discovery that leads to more watery revelations, in this spellbinding and visually ravishing drama.”
The Last Porno Show
World Premiere
Category: Contemporary World Cinema
Director: Kire Paputts
TIFF Synopsis: “A man inherits his estranged father’s prized possession — a derelict porno theatre — in Kire Paputts’ second feature, about gentrification and finding love and compassion in unlikely places.”
The Physics of Sorrow
World Premiere
Category: Short Cuts
Director: Theodore Ushev
TIFF Synopsis: “Academy Award–nominated animator Theodore Ushev reaches a new level of artistry with a saga of childhood reveries and adult regrets that is also the first-ever fully animated film using encaustic painting.”
The Twentieth Century
World Premiere
Category: Midnight Madness
Director: Matthew Rankin
TIFF Synopsis: “Winnipeg’s Matthew Rankin (The Tesla World Light) doubles down on his signature mode of gonzo history films with this bizarro biopic of William Lyon Mackenzie King, which reimagines the former Canadian Prime Minister’s early life as a series of abject humiliations, both professional and sexual.”
Director: Ellen Page, Ian Daniel
TIFF Synopsis: “Ellen Page brings attention to the injustices and injuries caused by environmental racism in her home province, in this urgent documentary on Indigenous and African Nova Scotian women fighting to protect their communities, their land, and their futures.”
This Ink Runs Deep
World Premiere
Category: Short Cuts
Director: Asia Youngman
TIFF Synopsis: “In this vivid and moving documentary by Asia Youngman, Indigenous artists throughout Canada strive to reclaim their cultures and identities through a reawakening of tattoo practices, both traditional and contemporary.”
This Is Not a Movie
World Premiere
Category: TIFF Docs
Director: Yung Chang
TIFF Synopsis: “The ground-breaking and often game-changing reporting of legendary foreign correspondent and author Robert Fisk is profiled in the latest from acclaimed documentarian Yung Chang (Up the Yangtze).”
These films, of course, join previously announced Canuck fare like Daniel Roher’s documentary Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band, which kicks off the fest, Semi Chellas’ American Woman, Atom Egoyan’s Guest of Honour, François Girard’s The Song of Names and Barry Avrich’s documentary David Foster: Off the Record. All Canadian feature films at TIFF 2019 are also eligible for the Canada Goose Award for Best Canadian Feature Film.
The 44th Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 5-15 2019. Click here for more information on all the films already announced.
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