Local film distributors are forging an unprecedented alliance on National Canadian Film Day to promote local content, encouraging audiences to discover – or rediscover – titles from their libraries.
The unified front is a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced theatres to close just as peak Canadian film season was getting underway. Canadian titles struggle annually to find real estate on multiplex screens, so the closure hit our industry especially hard.
Buzzy movies like Anne At 13,000 Feet, White Lie, The Rest Of Us, Easy Land and Murmur had their scheduled theatrical runs indefinitely bumped. Meanwhile Jeff Barnaby’s Indigenous zombie thriller Blood Quantum went from a March 27 theatrical release to an April 28 digital and VOD drop.
The 24 selections are curated by Elevation Pictures, eOne Films, LevelFILM, MK2, Mongrel Media and Pacific Northwest Pictures libraries and will launch April 22 under a unified banner on Apple TV, Telus, Rogers, Bell and Cineplex Store.
Here are some highlights:
And The Birds Rained Down
(Louise Archambault, 2019)
Jocelyne Saucier’s rich and melodramatic novel about seniors living off the radar, coping with trauma and searching for peace amongst themselves, is adapted with great performances from Gilberte Scott and the late Andrée Lachapelle in her final role.
The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open
(Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn, 2019)
Since being featured in last year’s Rising Stars issue, this powerful real-time drama about two Indigenous women who are worlds apart found a champion in Ava DuVernay (whose Array Films distributed the film worldwide), who won the Best Canadian Film prizes from both the Vancouver and Toronto film critics associations and scored six nominations at the Canadian Screen Awards.
Canadian Strain
(Geordie Sabbagh, 2020)
Rising Star Jess Salgueiro carries this legalization comedy as a cannabis dealer protecting her turf against new competition: the Canadian government.
Room
(Lenny Abrahamson, 2015)
The Oscar-winning co-production inspired by the Elisabeth Fritzl case about a mother and child imprisoned in a monstrous house is a devastating reminder that being forced to stay indoors isn’t bad at all for most of us.
Water
(Deepa Mehta, 2005)
Mehta’s masterpiece about oppressed widows in India perfectly encapsulates what it means to be a Canadian filmmaker. She can look back at her ancestral land with a critical lens, taking issue with its patriarchal institutions, while also celebrating the culture and embracing its romanticism.
Here’s the full list:
Elevation Pictures
Hyena Road (Paul Gross, 2015)
Indian Horse (Stephen Campanelli, 2018)
Room (Lenny Abrahamson, 2015)
Run This Town (Ricky Tollman, 2020)
The Song Of Names (François Girard, 2019)
eOne Films
Birthmarked (Emanuel Hoss-Desmarais, 2018)
The Kindness Of Strangers (Lone Scherfig)
The Young And Prodigious T.S. Spivet (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2013)
The 9th Life Of Louis Drax (Alexandre Aja, 2016)
LevelFILM
Bang Bang Baby (Jeffrey St. Jules, 2015)
Dim the Fluorescents (Daniel Warth, 2017)
Edge Of Winter (Rob Connelly, 2016)
Suck It Up (Jordan Canning, 2017)
The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn, 2019)
MK2/Mile End
And The Birds Rained Down (Louise Archambault, 2019)
Mongrel Media
Water (Deepa Mehta, 2005)
The Grizzlies (Miranda de Pencier, 2018)
Maudie (Aisling Walsh, 2017)
Brooklyn (John Crowley, 2016)
Anthropocene: The Human Epoch (Edward Burtynsky, Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier, 2018)
Pacific Northwest Pictures
Canadian Strain (Geordie Sabbagh, 2020)
Drone (Jason Bourque, 2017)
Falls Around Her (Darlene Naponse, 2018)
Lavender (Ed Gass-Donnelly, 2017)
Update: An earlier version of this story listed titles from Entract Films as well as eOne’s Merci Pour Tout. They save since been removed from this initiative to join a separate French-Canadian promotional effort.
@justsayrad
