Journeys that may be emotional, geographical, temporal, or all of these at once

Great cinema can do so much at once — even the most ruthlessly efficient multi-taskers among us can get jealous. To experience the ten features and ten shorts in this year’s Canada’s Top Ten is to witness all that the medium can do, where sharing compelling stories is often just the starting point.

Beyond its abilities to serve as a dream spinner, empathy machine, and mirror to the world, cinema is remarkably handy as a time-travelling teleportation device too. Indeed, many of the filmmakers in Canada’s Top Ten eagerly demonstrate that fact.

For some, cinema is a means of recreating and reliving eras that might be only a few years gone — like the Montreal of the early 2010s in Chandler Levack’s Mile End Kicks — or four millennia in the past — like the magic-filled Arctic landscape of Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband). The latter was doubly honoured at TIFF ’25 with the Best Canadian Feature Film Award and a Special Tribute Award for director Zacharias Kunuk.

Even though owning a time-travelling RV evidently comes with downsides, the possibility of escape must still seem very tempting to the characters facing daunting challenges in the present, whether it’s the painfully conflicted professor in Alireza Khatami’s The Things You Kill, the reluctant safe-cracker in Daniel Roher’s Tuner, or the polyamorous couple in Eric K. Boulianne’s Follies. Thankfully, circumstances are less fraught for the young astronaut in Kid Koala’s Space Cadet and Amalie Atkins’ nonagenarian subject in Agatha’s Almanac.

The filmmakers in selection occupy a similar diversity of stages within their personal timelines, with long-venerated directors like Kunuk sharing space with a bold new generation of talent that includes Johnson, Levack, Hannam, Khatami, and Roher. Romvari, Boulianne, Kid Koala, and Atkins all appear on Canada’s Top Ten with debut feature-length works.

Chances are they’ll soon be joined on the features list by the filmmakers being celebrated for their incredible shorts on Canada’s Top Ten. Again, the list combines directors making return appearances — Yassmina Karajah with Ambush; Martin Edralin with his Hot Docs Audience Award for Short Documentary winner La Mayordomía; Caroline Monnet with Pidikwe (Rumble); Heather Young with A Soft Touch; and the animation team of Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski with The Girl Who Cried Pearls, the winner of the Short Cuts Award for Best Canadian Short Film — with many emergent talents alongside Lesley Loksi Chan, the artist and experimental filmmaker whose Lloyd Wong, Unfinished won the Berlinale’s shorts competition.

Made by teams across the country and honoured all over the world, these 20 films collectively demonstrate how much strength lies in diversity, a maxim that TIFF proves again and again across its year-round Canadian programming, including TIFF Lightbox’s monthly See the North series.

For now, it’s time to celebrate the scope and strength of this nation’s cinema by embarking on the journeys captured in the films in Canada’s Top Ten — journeys that may be emotional, geographical, temporal, or all of these at once.

JASON ANDERSON

Tickets will be available to TIFF Members on January 15, and to the public on January 16.