The films for Canada’s Top Ten were selected by a jury of industry professionals. They include Cosmopolis by David Cronenberg, The End of Time by Peter Mettler, Goon by Michael Dowse, Laurence Anyways by Xavier Dolan, Midnight's Children by Deepa Mehta, My Awkward Sexual Adventure by Sean Garrity, Rebelle (War Witch) by Kim Nguyen, Still by Michael McGowan, Stories We Tell by Sarah Polley, and The World Before Her by Nisha Pahuja.
http://tiff.net/topten
Schedule for Canada's Top Ten at Lightbox
Friday, January 4, 2013
Still
Director: Michael McGowan
Canada (Ontario / New Brunswick) | 102 minutes | PG
8:00 PM
Sometimes cantankerous and always stubborn, Craig (James Cromwell) owes the survival of his New Brunswick family farm to his relationship with his wife, Irene (Geneviève Bujold). But when Irene's health begins to fail, Craig is faced with the choice of either building a new, more suitable home for her, or leaving the farm they have lived on for decades. Michael McGowan's Still is, in part, about the battle between tradition and modernity. It's also an exquisitely mounted and deeply affecting love story about a couple in their twilight years — brought vividly to life by Cromwell and Bujold, who are nothing short of magnificent.
Saturday, January 5, 2013
Still
Director: Michael McGowan
Canada (Ontario / New Brunswick) | 102 minutes | PG
12:30 PM
Sometimes cantankerous and always stubborn, Craig (James Cromwell) owes the survival of his New Brunswick family farm to his relationship with his wife, Irene (Geneviève Bujold). But when Irene's health begins to fail, Craig is faced with the choice of either building a new, more suitable home for her, or leaving the farm they have lived on for decades. Michael McGowan's Still is, in part, about the battle between tradition and modernity. It's also an exquisitely mounted and deeply affecting love story about a couple in their twilight years — brought vividly to life by Cromwell and Bujold, who are nothing short of magnificent.
Mavericks: Sarah Polley
3:30 PM
Since Sarah Polley’s feature directorial debut with Away from Her in 2006, all of her films have been selected for Canada’s Top Ten. Marking her return with Stories We Tell, the acclaimed filmmaker and actor joins Cameron Bailey, Artistic Director of the Toronto International Film Festival, for an onstage conversation about her career, with a special focus on her most recent work. Among the topics to be discussed: the virtues of working in Canada, Polley’s move from performer to director, the differences between documentary and fiction filmmaking, and the genesis of her 2012 Canada’s Top Ten selection, and Stories We Tell.
Stories We Tell
Director: Sarah Polley
Canada (Ontario) | 108 minutes | 14A
5:30 PM
Stories We Tell, the first documentary from director Sarah Polley (Away from Her, Take This Waltz), is a personal essay on the intractable subjects of truth and memory. Using a captivating combination of archival footage, still photos and testimonials, Polley examines the disagreements and varying narratives of her own family as they look back on decades-old events. The result is a lively and richly textured documentary which seamlessly blends past and present, the real and the imagined - one devoid of sensationalism and filled with tender and powerful moments.
Laurence Anyways
Director: Xavier Dolan
Canada (Quebec) / France | 161 minutes | 14A
8:00 PM
Shot in a kind of hyper-florid style to capture the vicissitudes of an untenable love affair, Xavier Dolan’s epic romance Laurence Anyways feels like Wuthering Heights relocated to the streets of Montreal, with a transgendered Heathcliff and a punky Catherine. The crux of the film: can this storm-tossed couple stay together when both biology and society are arrayed against them? Can they live apart? Driven by gutsy performances, particularly by leads Melvil Poupaud and Suzanne Clément, Laurence Anyways may be the most audacious, searing meditation on love and sexuality ever made in this country.
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Laurence Anyways
Director: Xavier Dolan
Canada (Quebec) / France | 161 minutes | 14A
12:00 PM
Shot in a kind of hyper-florid style to capture the vicissitudes of an untenable love affair, Xavier Dolan’s epic romance Laurence Anyways feels like Wuthering Heights relocated to the streets of Montreal, with a transgendered Heathcliff and a punky Catherine. The crux of the film: can this storm-tossed couple stay together when both biology and society are arrayed against them? Can they live apart? Driven by gutsy performances, particularly by leads Melvil Poupaud and Suzanne Clément, Laurence Anyways may be the most audacious, searing meditation on love and sexuality ever made in this country.
Stories We Tell
Director: Sarah Polley
Canada (Ontario) | 108 minutes | 14A
3:30 PM
Stories We Tell, the first documentary from director Sarah Polley (Away from Her, Take This Waltz), is a personal essay on the intractable subjects of truth and memory. Using a captivating combination of archival footage, still photos and testimonials, Polley examines the disagreements and varying narratives of her own family as they look back on decades-old events. The result is a lively and richly textured documentary which seamlessly blends past and present, the real and the imagined - one devoid of sensationalism and filled with tender and powerful moments.
Shorts Programme A
| 57 minutes | 14A
7:00 PM
From a magical animated piece based on the famous tale of Kaspar Hauser to an absurdist comedy-drama about a lonely man caring for a depressed cat; from a surreal account of a woman succumbing to illness to powerful dramas about barriers to understanding, this collection of short films uses a wide range of styles to explore themes of isolation and fragile realities.
Please note that there has been a start time change to Canada's Top Ten Shorts Programme A. It will screen on Sunday January 6th at 7:00 PM (instead of 6:30 PM).
Shorts Programme B
| 56 minutes | 14A
9:30 PM
The best laid plans go awry in this diverse programme of shorts, which includes a stop-motion exploration of the hardship of labour, a comic riff on spirituality and temptation from Trailer Park Boys creator Mike Clattenburg, a portrait of a young woman's life turned upside down by a disobedient dog, and Deco Dawson's award-winning account of the life (real and imagined) of the last Surrealist, Jean Benoît.
Monday, January 7, 2013
Goon
Director: Michael Dowse
Canada (Manitoba / Quebec) | 90 minutes | 18A
9:30 PM
The latest from acclaimed maverick Michael Dowse (FUBAR, FUBAR 2, It’s All Gone Pete Tong) is a raucous, hilarious take on Canada's one true national obsession. Co-written by Evan Goldberg (Tropic Thunder) and Jay Baruchel (who also co-stars), Goon deals with a conflict every hockey fan — and virtually every Canadian, fan or not — has an opinion on: violence on the ice. Dowse and Baruchel don't skimp on the bloodshed, or our appetite for it. Think of it as the Canadian film-comedy counterpart to Jimi Hendrix's version of the "The Star Spangled Banner": sacrilegious, twisted and, somehow, perversely patriotic.
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Goon
Director: Michael Dowse
Canada (Manitoba / Quebec) | 90 minutes | 18A
4:00 PM
The latest from acclaimed maverick Michael Dowse (FUBAR, FUBAR 2, It’s All Gone Pete Tong) is a raucous, hilarious take on Canada's one true national obsession. Co-written by Evan Goldberg (Tropic Thunder) and Jay Baruchel (who also co-stars), Goon deals with a conflict every hockey fan — and virtually every Canadian, fan or not — has an opinion on: violence on the ice. Dowse and Baruchel don't skimp on the bloodshed, or our appetite for it. Think of it as the Canadian film-comedy counterpart to Jimi Hendrix's version of the "The Star Spangled Banner": sacrilegious, twisted and, somehow, perversely patriotic.
Rebelle
Director: Kim Nguyen
Canada (Quebec) | 90 minutes | 14A
7:30 PM
Kim Nguyen's harrowing Rebelle tells the story of a 12-year-old Central African girl (Rachel Mwanza) abducted by a rebel army and forced to commit unspeakable acts as a child soldier. Winner of the Best Actress prize at Berlin in 2012, Mwanza delivers an extraordinary performance as Komona. Heartfelt and helplessly moving, Rebelle guides us through the harsh world of a young girl whose circumstances are tragic, yet whose story is one of formidable courage and unquenchable hope.
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Rebelle
Director: Kim Nguyen
Canada (Quebec) | 90 minutes | 14A
4:00 PM
Kim Nguyen's harrowing Rebelle tells the story of a 12-year-old Central African girl (Rachel Mwanza) abducted by a rebel army and forced to commit unspeakable acts as a child soldier. Winner of the Best Actress prize at Berlin in 2012, Mwanza delivers an extraordinary performance as Komona. Heartfelt and helplessly moving, Rebelle guides us through the harsh world of a young girl whose circumstances are tragic, yet whose story is one of formidable courage and unquenchable hope.
The World Before Her
Director: Nisha Pahuja
Canada (Ontario) | 90 minutes | PG
7:30 PM
Nisha Pahuja's searing documentary The World Before Her contrasts two radically different Indias : on one side is a large faction of fundamentalist Hindu women; on the other, women who embrace the "new" by entering the Miss India beauty pageant. Crosscutting between these two worlds, Pahuja creates a dark, often chilling portrait of a contemporary cultural schism, while establishing herself as a keen-eyed documentarian in the vein of Yung Chang (Up the Yangtze, China Heavyweight). Like him, she is adept at finding situations that perfectly encapsulate the tides of change, while locating the ironies and contradictions running beneath them.
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Midnight's Children
Director: Deepa Mehta
Canada (Ontario) / United Kingdom | 145 minutes | PG
6:30 PM
Deepa Mehta's highly anticipated collaboration with Salman Rushdie on the screen adaptation of his Booker Prize–winning novel is an inspired allegorical fantasy that follows the destinies of two children born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947 — the moment India claimed its independence from Britain. An irreverent epic of Shakespearean proportions, shot through with moments of arresting intimacy, Midnight's Children is a production of truly impressive scope.
The World Before Her
Director: Nisha Pahuja
Canada (Ontario) | 90 minutes | PG
4:00 PM
Nisha Pahuja's searing documentary The World Before Her contrasts two radically different Indias : on one side is a large faction of fundamentalist Hindu women; on the other, women who embrace the "new" by entering the Miss India beauty pageant. Crosscutting between these two worlds, Pahuja creates a dark, often chilling portrait of a contemporary cultural schism, while establishing herself as a keen-eyed documentarian in the vein of Yung Chang (Up the Yangtze, China Heavyweight). Like him, she is adept at finding situations that perfectly encapsulate the tides of change, while locating the ironies and contradictions running beneath them.
Friday, January 11, 2013
Midnight's Children
Director: Deepa Mehta
Canada (Ontario) / United Kingdom | 145 minutes | PG
3:00 PM
Deepa Mehta's highly anticipated collaboration with Salman Rushdie on the screen adaptation of his Booker Prize–winning novel is an inspired allegorical fantasy that follows the destinies of two children born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947 — the moment India claimed its independence from Britain. An irreverent epic of Shakespearean proportions, shot through with moments of arresting intimacy, Midnight's Children is a production of truly impressive scope.
Cosmopolis
Director: David Cronenberg
France / Canada (Ontario) / Portugal / Italy | 109 minutes | 14A
9:30 PM
Arriving in the wake of the Occupy movements and the recent financial collapse, David Cronenberg's stylish and timely adaptation of Don DeLillo's apocalyptic satire follows a billionaire financier (Robert Pattinson) as he creeps across an imploding New York City in a limo, his life of absurd luxury collapsing around him. It's a scenario geared expressly toward Cronenberg's sensibilities, playing out like Videodrome — or, as The New Yorker argued, Crash — transplanted to the endangered world of the one per cent.
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Cosmopolis
Director: David Cronenberg
France / Canada (Ontario) / Portugal / Italy | 109 minutes | 14A
12:30 PM
Arriving in the wake of the Occupy movements and the recent financial collapse, David Cronenberg's stylish and timely adaptation of Don DeLillo's apocalyptic satire follows a billionaire financier (Robert Pattinson) as he creeps across an imploding New York City in a limo, his life of absurd luxury collapsing around him. It's a scenario geared expressly toward Cronenberg's sensibilities, playing out like Videodrome — or, as The New Yorker argued, Crash — transplanted to the endangered world of the one per cent.
The End of Time
Director: Peter Mettler
Canada (Ontario) / Switzerland | 114 minutes | PG
6:45 PM
Visionary filmmaker Peter Mettler (Gambling, Gods and LSD) traverses the globe to explore (and explode) our conceptions of time, in this entrancing combination of documentary and mind-expanding philosophical speculation.
My Awkward Sexual Adventure
Director: Sean Garrity
Canada (Manitoba / Quebec) | 100 minutes | 18A
9:45 PM
Raucous, sexy and frenetic, Sean Garrrity's My Awkward Sexual Adventure follows an accountant who makes a pact with an exotic dancer who, in exchange for his financial advice, agrees to help him beef up his skills as a lover and win back the love of his life. The pair head from there straight into a comedic perfect storm, complete with castrating mothers, ultra-sensitive nudist neighbours, and decidedly inconsiderate repo men. And, perhaps unusually for a sex comedy, My Awkward Sexual Adventure is surprisingly educational.
Sunday, January 13, 2013
The End of Time
Director: Peter Mettler
Canada (Ontario) / Switzerland | 114 minutes | PG
12:30 PM
Visionary filmmaker Peter Mettler (Gambling, Gods and LSD) traverses the globe to explore (and explode) our conceptions of time, in this entrancing combination of documentary and mind-expanding philosophical speculation.
My Awkward Sexual Adventure
Director: Sean Garrity
Canada (Manitoba / Quebec) | 100 minutes | 18A
3:30 PM
Raucous, sexy and frenetic, Sean Garrrity's My Awkward Sexual Adventure follows an accountant who makes a pact with an exotic dancer who, in exchange for his financial advice, agrees to help him beef up his skills as a lover and win back the love of his life. The pair head from there straight into a comedic perfect storm, complete with castrating mothers, ultra-sensitive nudist neighbours, and decidedly inconsiderate repo men. And, perhaps unusually for a sex comedy, My Awkward Sexual Adventure is surprisingly educational.
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