TIFF 2019: 25 Canadian Films We’re Excited to See

Indigenous man in parka face-to-face with a white man with white hair and beard.

Photos: courtesy TIFF

Canadian filmmakers are making a big splash at this year’s Toronto International film festival, starting with Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band, which is the first Canadian film to ever kick the festival off on opening night.

And judging by the full slate of Canadian films announced in early August, Canadian TIFF-goers will have plenty of home-grown options throughout the 11-day festival.

The list of films show 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 Canuck selection for TIFF 2019 and found 25 that we can’t wait to check out at the fest. Those include…

 

TIFF 2019

And the Birds Rained Down

World Premiere

Category: Contemporary World Cinema

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.”

 

TIFF 2019

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.”

 

Life Support

World Premiere

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.”

 

TIFF 2019

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.”

 

TIFF 2019

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.”

 

TIFF 2019

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.”

 

TIFF 2019

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.”

 

TIFF 2019

The Depths

World Premiere

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.”

 

TIFF 2019

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.”

 

TIFF 2019

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.”

 

TIFF 2019

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.”

 

TIFF 2019

There’s Something In the Water

World Premiere

Category: TIFF Docs

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.”

 

TIFF 2019

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.”

 

TIFF 2019

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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