CANADA'S TOP TEN Trailer 2021 | TIFF 2021

Описание: Canada’s Top Ten celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. The brainchild of former TIFF director Piers Handling, who was seeking ways to expand awareness of Canadian cinema, the series has gone through numerous metamorphoses since its inception in 2001. The separate Canada’s Top Ten Short Films list was added in 2006. Over the years, Top Ten has mounted cross-country tours and hosted onstage conversations, musical performances, and art installations. But one thing has remained consistent: each year’s lists have showcased the incredible wealth of talent in the Canadian film industry, spanning the entire country, spotlighting work in every genre, and honouring a diverse group of filmmakers.

Canada’s Top Ten 2021 includes its share of veterans, but also looks towards the future. There are eight first appearances among the feature-film selections, and six debuts. (That said, these first-timers are hardly unknown: Igor Drljaca, Thyrone Tommy, and Rich Williamson have all had short films in Top Ten before.) The shorts lineup includes two of Canada’s most revered directors — Zacharias Kunuk and Alanis Obomsawin — as well as returning filmmaker Terri Calder and established talent Albert Shin, but the other six titles are by newcomers to the list. (The short films will screen in two programmes at TIFF Bell Lightbox January 22.)

The features list this year comprises one of the most varied lineups yet, and a very timely one at that. There are three stellar literary adaptations (Michael McGowan’s All My Puny Sorrows, Sébastien Pilote’s Maria Chapdelaine, and Shasha Nakhai and Williamson’s celebrated Scarborough); a beautiful animated biography of a young Jewish artist whose life is cut short in the Holocaust (Tahir Rana and Eric Warin’s Charlotte); a powerful and visually striking analysis of globalization (Ivan Grbovic’s Drunken Birds, Canada’s official Oscar submission for Best International Feature); a stylish exploration of the contemporary jazz scene (Tommy’s Learn to Swim); a powerful allegory for the forced removal of Indigenous children (Danis Goulet’s dystopian thriller Night Raiders); an insightful and much-needed documentary about the stereotypes projected onto Black women (Jennifer Holness’s Subjects of Desire); a poignant drama about the plight of teens facing a bleak future in contemporary Sarajevo (Drljaca’s The White Fortress); and Rhayne Vermette’s deeply personal debut feature, Ste. Anne, a moving drama about family and winner of the Best Canadian Feature Film prize at TIFF. (Incidentally, one of Vermette’s shorts will screen February 24 in a series of short films studying the avant-garde in Canada.)

And while the future of Canadian cinema looks extraordinarily bright, it’s worth noting that many of the films on the very first Top Ten list, from 2001, are still widely celebrated. Two have recently been restored: The Heart of the World by Guy Maddin (the all-time leader in Top Ten appearances, with 10 selections) and Catherine Martin’s luminous Mariages, which is now being transferred to 4K under the auspices of a new Telefilm archival programme. Here’s to the films on this year’s lists. May they enjoy the same legacy.