Now in its 14th year, Canada’s Top Ten Film Festival features some of the most important and original Canadian films of the year. Organized and juried through the Toronto International Film Festival, the series includes films from Quebec, Alberta, Nunavut and British Columbia and highlights the best independent shorts of the year.
Mommy
Fri & Sat, Mar 6 & 7 / 7 pm
Sun, Mar 8 / 3 pm & 7 pm
Wed, Mar 11 / 7 pm
Thu, Mar 12 / 9 pm
Audacious and inspiring, this electrifying new film from Québécois wunderkind Xavier Dolan also shared the Special Jury Prize at Cannes with co-winner Jean Luc Godard. The film focuses on the story of a single mother Diane and her troubled teenage son Steve and the bond they develop with a shy neighbour.
Maps to the Stars
Fri & Sat, Mar 6 & 7 / 9:30 pm
In this fiercely intelligent satire of the movie business, Julianne Moore gives a stunning performance as Havana Segrand, a desperate and insecure middle aged actress scheming remorselessly to land the lead in a remake of a film that her mother starred in years ago.
The Price We Pay
Sat, Mar 7 / 3 pm
Thu, Mar 12 / 7 pm
Director Harold Crooks (Surviving Progress) blows the lid off the dirty world of corporate malfeasance with this incendiary doc about the dark history and dire present-day reality of big-business tax avoidance, which has seen multinationals depriving governments of trillions of dollars in tax revenues by harboring profits in offshore havens.
Félix et Meira
Fri & Sat, Mar 13 & 14 / 7 pm
Sun, Mar 15 / 3 pm & 7 pm
Award winner at TIFF for Best Canadian First Feature, an unusual romance blossoms between two lost souls who inhabit the same neighborhood but vastly different worlds – Meira, a young Hassidic Jewish mother and Félix, a loner grieving the recent death of his estranged father.
Tu dors Nicole (You’re Sleeping Nicole)
Fri & Sat, Mar 13 & 14 / 9 pm
A critical hit at Cannes, Stéphane Lafleur once again displays his trademark absurdist humour. Taking advantage of the family home in the absence of her parents, twentysomething Nicole flows peacefully through the summer with her best friend Veronica. Nicole’s brother arrives with his band to record an album. Their imposing presence quickly undermines the relationship between the two friends.
In Her Place
Sat, Mar 14 / 3 pm
A wealthy couple from Seoul seek to secretly adopt the unborn child of an impoverished and troubled rural teenager, in this slow-burning and moving drama from writer-director Albert Shin.
Top Ten Student Shorts
Wed, Mar 18 / 7 pm
This program of student shorts features some incredibly imaginative shorts and a diversity of subject matter and innovative use of cinema – these filmmakers are speaking from the heart and it shows in the quality of the work.
Top Ten Shorts
Thu, Mar 19 / 7 pm
Bold works of imagination, created out of a love of independent cinema – irreverent, poignant, fantastic! Introduced by jury member and Cinematheque programmer Dave Barber.
Violent
Thu, Mar 20 / 7 pm
A catastrophic event sparks a young Norwegian woman’s memories of the five people who loved her most in the visually stunning feature debut of West Coast musician and filmmaker Andrew Huculiak (drummer for We Are the City).
Corbo
Fri & Sat, Mar 20 & 21 / 7 pm
Sun, Mar 22 / 7 pm
A teenage Quebecer in the 1960s evolves from pro-independence activist to radical terrorist, in this gripping chronicle of the origins of the FLQ in the decade preceding the 1970 October Crisis.
Generously sponsored by IATSE 856 and Radio Canada Manitoba and presented with Tiff Canada’s Top Ten.
