Canada's Top Ten

In a post-apocalyptic future where food is scarce, the last descendants of a Black family of farmers who settled in Canada after the American Civil War must protect their homestead from an organized militia hell-bent on taking their land.

After a series of plagues and wars leaves society in ruins, the Freemans are surviving — even thriving — on a farm in the middle of nowhere... so long as they repel the occasional raiding party. But what good is surviving the end of the world if it means snuffing out your own humanity?

Former soldier Hailey (Danielle Deadwyler) made that choice years ago, believing that isolation was the only way to protect her family. She and her partner Galen (Michael Greyeyes) fled the collapse along with their children, training them to fight (and, yes, kill). But now Hailey’s eldest Emanuel (Kataem O’Connor) is a young man, and when he meets a young woman (Milcania Diaz-Rojas) in the forest beyond the fence, his need for human contact could place the whole family in jeopardy.

Writer-director R.T. Thorne infuses the dystopian narrative with contemporary relevance and an inescapable historical metaphor, placing Black and Indigenous characters at the centre of a story about people defending their land from those who would kill them for it without a second thought.

Deadwyler is electric as the driven Hailey, whose refusal to consider even the slightest deviation from her shoot-first philosophy is rooted in the fear that she won’t be able to protect her people. And Greyeyes finally gets a role that synthesizes his paradoxical strengths as a charismatic badass and deadpan comic player. But Toronto’s own O’Connor is the real discovery as Emanuel, a young man realizing that he might need to defy his family in order to save it.

NORM WILNER

Official Selection, TIFF ’24

Content advisory: explicit violence, mature themes, sexual content, coarse language

Music lovers and local history buffs will adore this intimate and powerful portrait of Toronto club singer Jackie Shane.

Full of force and passion, the very sound of Jackie Shane’s voice is justification enough to celebrate the singer, who became a sensation in Toronto’s Yonge Street club circuit of the ’60s before disappearing from public view. Yet Shane’s story is extraordinary for many more reasons, as Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee prove with their extraordinary portrait of this trailblazing transgender performer. Through its deft mix of animated reenactments, archival material, new interviews, and the subject’s own words from conversations recorded shortly before she died in 2019, their documentary shines a light on an artist whose talent was matched only by her courage to live her truth.

Mabbott and Rosenberg-Lee trace an eventful journey that began in Tennessee, where the emerging signs of Shane’s queer identity compounded the dangers and injustices she faced as a Black American in the Jim Crow South. After heading north of the border in her teens, Shane became a star attraction at Toronto clubs whose mobbed-up proprietors were marginally more accepting of a Black trans woman — provided she could pack the house. Judging by the press coverage Shane attracted and the electrifying live recordings of her in 1967, she had little trouble doing just that.

Sadly, the many challenges in Shane’s life beyond the stage prevented her from attaining the wider fame she deserved, at least until a new generation discovered her daring. Named for the single that became Shane’s signature, Any Other Way is a powerful and poignant tribute.

JASON ANDERSON

Keira Jang, Joel Oulette, and Sandra Oh star in this introspective live-action and animated feature set in the near future when technology and travel are almost completely banned, and nobody is allowed to live past age 50.

Eight years since her last feature, filmmaker, writer, and visual artist Ann Marie Fleming brings her gentle, introspective touch to the timely genre of environmental science fiction.

Joined by past collaborator Sandra Oh — who voiced and co-produced Fleming’s Window Horses (TIFF ’16) — and elements of her trademark animation, Can I Get a Witness? tells the story of a mother and daughter in a near-future world where huge sacrifices are made to maintain life on Earth.

With its resources swallowed by e-waste and overpopulation, the world is experiencing an anthropogenic collapse. To manage, technological advances are shunned. Nobody has electricity and only people with exceptions are permitted cars. Most importantly, there is also a collective agreement that nobody is allowed to live beyond the age of 50.

Oh’s Ellie lives with her teenage daughter Kiah (Keira Jang), who is starting her first day as a Documenter, an important role in this new world order. She uses her artistic gifts — beautifully conjured in animations — to draw the dying ceremonies, since printing and photography have been banned.

Kiah is paired with Daniel (Joel Oulette), the young man who performs the contractual elements of each person’s end-of-life ceremony. He matter-of-factly provides the packages a person can choose, sets them up when the time comes, and performs the burials. But his new coworker is having a hard time handling the emotional impacts of the job.

With Fleming’s deft touch, Can I Get a Witness? is an inspired look at what memories — and catastrophic climate change — might look like.

KELLY BOUTSALIS

Official Selection, TIFF ’24

Content advisory: mature themes

Struggling with a new baby and a distracted husband, an academic is more than happy to reconnect with an old college pal. But what sort of relationship are they resuming, precisely?

In Matt and Mara, Toronto writer-director Kazik Radwanski reunites Deragh Campbell and Matt Johnson — the stars of his prizewinning drama Anne at 13,000 ft (TIFF ’19) — for another precise, incisive drama. But this one’s a little different. It’s looser and even a little silly, the better to distract you from the heaviness in its heart.

Matt (Johnson) and Mara (Campbell) were friends in university. But that was years ago. Now, Mara is a creative-writing professor in Toronto, married to Samir (Mounir Al Shami) and raising a toddler (Avery Nayman). And when Matt, now a successful author who moved to New York, wanders into her classroom, they pick up exactly where they left off — hanging out for hours on end, sharing dumb jokes, and generally being each other’s escape valve. Old friends reconnect all the time. It’s harmless, right?

Matt and Mara is all about that question, and what can happen when people refuse to confront it directly. Campbell once again applies her electric screen presence to a character who’s opaque to others but open wide to Nikolay Michaylov’s camera. And with Johnson, who demonstrated surprising dramatic chops opposite Campbell in Anne, Radwanski finds a new context for the BlackBerry director’s distinctive screen presence, seeding hidden complexities into his goofball charisma.

It’s a new and specific take on a familiar narrative, leaving room for unexpected humour and warmth. You might even see yourself in the characters. Or possibly the locations.

NORM WILNER

Official Selection, TIFF ’24

Content advisory: mature themes, coarse language

Sook-Yin Lee’s adaptation of Chester Brown’s autobiographical 2011 graphic novel is a movie only Lee could make… because it’s her story, too.

Chester Brown’s 2011 graphic novel told the story of his own journey into johnhood after the dissolution of his romantic life with long-time partner Sook-Yin Lee. More than a decade later, Lee, working with co-writer Joanne Sarazen (Tammy’s Always Dying, TIFF ’19), finds a cinematic analogue for Brown’s framing and compositions — a little gray, a bit flat — while bringing his characters to three-dimensional life. The result is a synthesis of Brown's confessional storytelling and Lee’s auto-fictional style.

Daniel Beirne (The Twentieth Century, TIFF ’19; I Like Movies, TIFF ’22), plays Chester, who’s liberated by the idea of sexual relationships without any emotional entanglements; if anything, he’s slightly befuddled by the way everyone asks him if he knows what he’s doing.

Emily Lê (Riceboy Sleeps, TIFF ’22) is Lee’s alter ego Sonny, who follows her open heart into every new opportunity and expects Chester to give her the space to figure out each resulting reconfiguration of their relationship. (Lee doesn’t let herself off the hook for the pain she causes, either.)

They’re surrounded by a cast of gifted Toronto character actors, most vividly Modern Whore author-producer Andrea Werhun as a culturally literate outcall worker whose genuine chemistry with Chester might challenge his newfound sexual liberation. (Or not.)

Lee connects the past with the present, bringing together Canadian underground artists and innovative cross-generational musicians to explore ideas around labour, sex work, queer culture, and forward-thinking freedoms. The result is a story only she could bring to the screen … because it’s her story, too.

NORM WILNER

Official Selection, TIFF ’24

Content advisory: violence, nudity, mature themes, sexually suggestive scenes, sexual language

Cate Blanchett stars in this absurd satire of a G7 world leaders meeting that spins wildly out of control, from co-directors Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson.

In this wildly entertaining satire from co-directors Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson, the leaders of the G7 nations — the US, Canada, Germany, Japan, Italy, France, and the UK — stumble into a surreal scene and are left to their own (inept) devices to get themselves out.

Rumours is ribald, playful, and an expansion of the Maddin-Johnson-Johnson oeuvre. The trademark oddities, like a glowing brain and bog people, are there; there’s a brief foray into black and white; and it was partly filmed in Winnipeg.

Co-produced by Ari Aster among others, it was also filmed in Hungary, with a stand-out international cast. Cate Blanchett is German chancellor Hilda, the host of the gathering; Roy Dupuis is the passionate Canadian prime minister; UK Prime Minister Cardosa Dewindt (Nikki Amuka-Bird) doggedly tries to keep this ragtag group on task, and, inexplicably, English actor Charles Dance keeps his accent as the president of the United States.

The G7 leaders are so lost in working on a provisional statement filled with platitudes and nonsense and addressing an unnamed crisis, that they don’t realize they’ve been abandoned by their servers. It’s only then, when the cameras and aides have left, that things really go off the rails and each of their shortcomings comes glaringly into focus.

KELLY BOUTSALIS

Official Selection, TIFF ’24

Content advisory: sexual content, coarse language

Kaniehtiio Horn (Alice, Darling, TIFF ’22) wrote, directed, and stars in Seeds, a tense thriller that weaves Kanienʼkehá:ka connections to the land with a cat-and-mouse game.

Imparting lessons of Kanienʼkehá:ka food sovereignty within a campy revenge thriller, Kaniehtiio Horn’s feature directorial debut takes viewers on a ride unlike any other. In Seeds, Horn (Alice, Darling) plays Ziggy, a Toronto-based bike courier and budding influencer. Just as she lands a new client, a seed and fertilizer company called Nature’s Oath, and starts making content for them, she’s called back to her community to house sit for her aunt.

Ziggy’s cousin, played by Dallas Goldtooth (Reservation Dogs), imparts a few nuggets of wisdom: to be wary of the seed company, and that creepy things happen around their aunt’s house. As a shadowy figure follows her, Ziggy must protect herself, and her aunt’s cache of seeds.

Already known as a talented film and television actor and producer, Horn flexes her writing and directing skills in this bloody and intelligent thriller that ties together connections to the land and to reproduction. In Ziggy, she has created a layered Indigenous female lead character, motivated by her people’s history, relying on her strengths, and not afraid to get violent.

In addition to seeing Horn lead a film for the first time, we also get Goldtooth in a great comic performance, and legendary actor Graham Greene pulling double duty as a crime show host and an uncle figure to Ziggy who comes alive in her dreams.

KELLY BOUTSALIS

Official Selection, TIFF ’24

Content advisory: explicit violence, horror, drug use, sexually suggestive scenes, coarse language

A Montréal copywriter sets out to reinvent himself as a sheep herder in the French Alps despite knowing literally nothing about the centuries-old craft.

Following a medical wake-up call, Montréal copywriter Mathyas Lefebure (Félix-Antoine Duval) abandons his life in Canada to reinvent himself as a sheep herder in the French Alps. After a rough start, he’s joined by Élise (Solène Rigot), a civil servant tempted by his stories of pastoral life, and together they commit to a summer on the mountainside. Just the two of them. And one border collie. And 800 sheep.

After such films as Missing Victor Pellerin, Vital Signs, and Antigone (Best Canadian Feature, TIFF ’19), Shepherds feels like a levelling up in scope and complexity for director and co-writer Sophie Deraspe. It’s a naturalistic, beautiful adaptation of the real-life Lefebure’s 2006 book, clear-eyed about the messy and often brutal realities of a shepherding life while also allowing us to see the wondrous spectacle that draws people to work on the land.

Duval, most recently seen in Bruce LaBruce’s Saint-Narcisse, embodies Lefebure’s questing nature, working earnestly to gain the respect of his fellow bergers while also trying to find his own style. Rigot has her own quest as Élise, whose impulsive decision to join Mathyas proves to be as life-changing as it is fulfilling.

And while violence and death are an essential part of the natural world, Deraspe’s depictions of such things are respectful and even compassionate… though the closing disclaimer that no animals were harmed still comes as a relief.

NORM WILNER

Official Selection, TIFF ’24

Content advisory: simulated animal violence; sexual content, nudity, coarse language

Grieving the loss of his wife, a tech entrepreneur finds what’s left of his world collapsing into a nightmare of sex, paranoia, and grief in David Cronenberg’s most personal film.

The Shrouds is the saddest movie David Cronenberg has ever made. It's steeped in grief; the loss of the filmmaker’s wife Carolyn in 2017 is the engine that drives every scene, and his decision to style and groom star Vincent Cassel as his own doppelgänger brings the point home all the more powerfully.

Cassel plays Karsh, a technological entrepreneur still grieving the death of his wife Becca (Diane Kruger) four years earlier. He has thrown himself into his work, devising technologically augmented burial shrouds that let loved ones watch their lost family members decompose. It’s the closest thing to being there with them — and no, it’s not for everyone. But when his wife's plot is among several desecrated in an apparent act of vandalism, Karsh slips into a full-on crisis that expands to involve Becca’s lookalike sister, Terry (also Kruger), her ex-husband Maury (Guy Pearce), and, eventually, Soo-Min (Sandrine Holt), the enigmatic wife of a dying Hungarian tycoon who wants to open one of Karsh's cemeteries in Budapest. Is Karsh losing his mind, or is some strange web closing around him?

Though The Shrouds does call back to Cronenberg’s body of work — specifically Videodrome, Naked Lunch, and Crash — it’s its own thing, a film unlike any he’s ever done before. The Shrouds denies the audience anything but the experience of Cronenberg’s own grief. It’s a work of art, written on the decomposing bodies of its characters, exploring the horror of simple human fragility. And it’s made by a master.

NORM WILNER

Official Selection, TIFF ’24

Content advisory: scenes of surgery; mature themes, sexual content, nudity, coarse language

Matthew Rankin’s second feature is a charmingly impossible story of a Canada where Persian and French are the two official languages, and loneliness is the common currency.

Winner of the inaugural Directors’ Fortnight audience award at Cannes this year, Matthew Rankin’s follow-up to his eccentric, surreal The Twentieth Century (TIFF ’19) is a gentle sort of comedy, settling us down in a reimagined Canada where Persian and French are the two official languages… and loneliness is the common currency.

In Winnipeg, children set themselves on eccentric quests — or dress like Groucho Marx — to flummox the adults around them, occasionally disrupting a tour group led by the flustered Massoud (Pirouz Nemati) as he does his best to explain the city’s curious landmarks.

Meanwhile, in Montreal, government wonk Matthew (played by Rankin himself) quits a job he hates and catches the first bus home to Manitoba to see his mother, only to find his family is not what he thought it was.

The films of Abbas Kiarostami and his New Iranian Cinema contemporary Mohsen Makhmalbaf are Rankin’s most obvious touchstones here, but Festival audiences will also recognize the influence of the Swedish absurdist Roy Andersson and the ’Peg’s own Guy Maddin, all filtered through Rankin’s deadpan comic sensibility. He’s traded the gleeful depravity of The Twentieth Century for something kinder and softer, an affectionate look at a diasporic nation trying to fit itself into a box that can’t contain it. Don’t worry, people still congregate at Tim Hortons. (Always Fresh!) It’s just that their idea of a double-double is a little different.

NORM WILNER

Official Selection, TIFF ’24

Content advisory: mature themes, coarse language