Toronto Film Festival Picks Best Canadian Films of 2023
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The traditionally celebrity-heavy Toronto Film Festival has unveiled its list of Canada’s best indie films for 2023, which includes a host of first-time directors that have come to the fore as the Hollywood actors strike put local movies and talent front and center at TIFF last September.
Canadian filmmakers were able to grab the spotlight after SAG-AFTRA members barred from promoting studio or streamer projects allowed them to fill the vacuum on TIFF red carpets and at industry events.
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New directors were also favorites of Toronto programmers as a shifting TIFF film market with few American celebrities in town also allowed the marquee festival to double down on finding new creative voices.
So here’s the top Canadian feature films of 2023, as decided by film pickers in Toronto.
1. BlackBerry
Matt Johnson’s drama about the meteoric rise of the world’s first smartphone, before its competitive collapse, bowed in Berlin. Jay Baruchel plays Research in Motion co-founder Mike Lazaridis, while Glenn Howerton fills the role of the Blackberry-maker’s CEO Jim Balsillie. Together they offer a toxic corporate partnership ultimately undone by Apple’s iPhone.
2. Hey, Viktor!
Former child actor Cody Lightning returns with a new comedy and a self-produced sequel to Chris Eyre’s 1998 film Smoke Signals. The mockumentary portrays a struggling Indigenous actor who tries to revive his career by cashing in on his childhood role and getting a sequel to Smoke Signals made. The film becomes as much a satire on fame as a journey of self-discovery.
3. Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person
Quebec director Ariane Louis-Seize’s dramedy and debut feature that bowed in Venice portrays a young woman vampire who can’t kill for blood, but finds a possible solution in a young man willing to give his life for her own. Sara Montpetit plays the teenage vampire whose fangs only come out when she feels a personal connection to her prey.
4. Kanaval
Henri Pardo’s French- and Creole-language drama and first fiction feature follows a young boy in a troubled hometown in Haiti forced along with his mother to flee to a small rural village in Quebec. Mother and son as strangers in a new land look to get used to Canada with the help of an older couple that warmly take them in.
5. The Queen of My Dreams
Fawzia Mirza’s debut feature captures a queer Pakistani Canadian girl struggling to reckon with the chasm between herself and her mother in two different eras. The film has Amrit Kaur playing Azra, a queer grad student on a trip to Pakistan facing the sudden death of her father, which sees her collide with her conservative Muslim mother Mariam (Nimra Bucha). She also plays the younger Mariam.
6. Seagrass
Another debut feature, Meredith Hama-Browns’ drama follows a Japanese-Canadian woman (Ally Maki) grappling with the death of her mother, only to realize at a family retreat how deeply the parents and children are emotionally disconnected. 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 the Richard Strauss opera Salome and has Amanda Seyfried playing a theater director having repressed trauma surface when she remounts her former mentor’s most famous work. The indie film reunites Egoyan with Seyfried after their collaboration on Chloe. Seven Veils, which bowed at TIFF, also stars Rebecca Liddiard, Douglas Smith, Mark O’Brien and Vinessa Antoine.
8. Solo
Sophie Dupuis’s third movie with Beau is Afraid star Theodore Pellerin is a character study of a young man trying to free himself from an abusive lover and an emotionally absent mother suddenly back in his life. Pellerin plays Simon, a rising star in the Montreal drag queen scene who must simultaneously endure two toxic and demeaning relationships. That’s until he’s forced to decide what’s best for his heart and life before his possible future as a drag queen star is destroyed.
9. Someone Lives Here
Zack Russell’s documentary and feature debut follows carpenter Khaleel Seivwright setting out to build insulated shelters for homeless people in Toronto during the pandemic, only to face opposition from city officials for addressing a humanitarian crisis. The modern-day David and Goliath story is set against the backdrop of North America’s housing crisis.
10. Tautuktavuk (What We See)
Nunavut directors Carol Kunnuk and Lucy Tulugarjuk’s drama sees a young woman leave her community in Canada’s Arctic north to live in Montreal, only to see herself separated from her closest friend, her oldest sister, during COVID-19 lockdowns. The film’s directors also play the sisters.
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