Toronto Film Festival Selects Best Canadian Films of 2023 – The Hollywood Reporter

The traditionally celebrity-packed Toronto Film Festival has unveiled its list of Canada’s best independent films for 2023, which includes a group of first-time directors who have come to the fore as the Hollywood actors’ strike puts local films and talent front and center at TIFF. Last September.

Canadian filmmakers have been able to grab the spotlight after SAG-AFTRA members were banned from promoting studio or streaming projects, allowing them to fill the void on red carpets at TIFF and at industry events.

New directors were also favorites with Toronto programmers as the changing TIFF film market with few American celebrities in the city also allowed the major festival to redouble its efforts to find new creative voices.

Here are the best Canadian feature films of 2023, as decided by Toronto filmmakers.

1. BlackBerry

Matt Johnson’s drama about the meteoric rise of the world’s first smartphone, before its competitive collapse, is set in Berlin. Jay Baruchel plays Mike Lazaridis, co-founder of Research in Motion, while Glenn Howerton plays Jim Balsillie, CEO of Blackberry. Together they present a toxic corporate partnership that was eventually undone by Apple’s iPhone.

2. Hey, Victor!

Former child actor Cody Lightning returns with a new comedy and self-produced sequel to the 1998 Chris Eyre film. Smoke signals. The mockumentary depicts a struggling Indigenous actor trying to revive his career by cashing in on his childhood role and landing a film sequel. Smoke signals to make. The film becomes as much a satire of fame as a journey of self-discovery.

3. A human vampire seeks the suicidal person’s approval

Quebec director Ariane-Louis Saez’s drama Lean into the Gun depicts a young vampire woman who cannot kill for blood, but finds a possible solution in a young man willing to sacrifice his life for hers. Sarah Montpetit plays the teenage vampire who only shows her fangs when she feels a personal connection to her prey.

4. Canvale

Henri Bardot’s drama and debut novel in French and Creole is about a young boy in his troubled hometown in Haiti who is forced with his mother to flee to a small rural village in Quebec. A mother and son, strangers in a new land, look to get accustomed to Canada with the help of an older couple who warmly host them.

5. The queen of my dreams

Fouzia Mirza’s debut film depicts an eccentric Pakistani-Canadian girl struggling to overcome the gap between her and her mother in two different eras. In the film, Amrit Kaur plays the role of Azra, a graduate student on a trip to Pakistan who faces the sudden death of her father, causing her to clash with her conservative Muslim mother, Maryam (Nimra Bucha). She also plays the role of the younger Maryam.

6. Seaweed

Another debut feature, Meredith Hama’s drama Browns, follows a Japanese-Canadian woman (Allie Maki) grappling with the death of her mother, only to realize at a family resort how deep the emotional disconnect between parents and children runs. The film explores the complexities of parenthood and marriage in a biracial family.

7. Seven veils

Atom Egoyan’s opera-themed drama is a reworking of Richard Strauss’s opera Salome and stars Amanda Seyfried as a theater director who has suppressed the surface of her shock when she retells her former teacher’s most famous work. The indie film reunites Egoyan with Seyfried after their collaboration on the film renal. Seven veilswhich bowed at TIFF, also stars Rebecca Lydiard, Douglas Smith, Mark O’Brien, and Vanessa Antoine.

8. Solo

Sophie Dupuy’s third film with… Boo is afraid Starring Theodore Pellerin is a character study of a young man trying to free himself from an abusive lover and an emotionally absent mother who suddenly reenters his life. Pellerin plays Simone, a rising star in Montreal’s drag queen scene who must simultaneously endure two toxic and humiliating relationships. That is until he is forced to decide what is best for his heart and his life before his potential future as a drag queen star is destroyed.

9. Someone lives here

Zach Russell’s documentary and feature debut follows carpenter Khalil Siwright as he sets out to build isolated shelters for Toronto’s homeless during the pandemic, but faces opposition from city officials to address a humanitarian crisis. This contemporary David and Goliath story is set against the backdrop of the housing crisis in North America.

10. Tawuktavuk (What We See)

The Nunavut-directed drama, directed by Carol Konuk and Lucy Tolujarjuk, follows a young woman who leaves her community in Canada’s northern Arctic to live in Montreal, only to find herself separated from her best friend, her older sister, during the coronavirus lockdowns. The film’s directors also play the sisters.