Ah, you know how it is with the Canadian Screen Award nominations.
The Academy Of Canadian Cinema & Television’s goals are admirable enough – to promote and recognize Canadian artistic accomplishment in film, television and digital media. But between the sponsored awards and the endless new categories, there’s always an undercurrent of neediness and a weird compulsion to show the world how great we are by celebrating literally everything the country produces. Or at least that’s how it feels, year after year.
That said, when the nominees were announced Tuesday morning, there were signs of restraint in the film section.
Just seven features are in contention for the best motion picture award rather than last year’s 10. Up for the top prize are Sadaf Foroughi’s Tehran-set drama Ava, Nora Twomey’s animated Afghanistan story The Breadwinner, Alexis Durand Brault’s family drama It’s The Heart That Dies Last, Simon Lavoie’s stylized thriller The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond Of Matches, Aisling Walsh’s period character study Maudie, Kathleen Hepburn’s wrenching Never Steady, Never Still and Robin Aubert’s rural zombie thriller The Ravenous, which screened at TIFF under its original French title Les Affamés.
With a total of eight nominations apiece, Ava and Never Steady, Never Still seem like the top contenders for the film prize. (François Girard’s historical drama Hochelaga, Land Of Souls also has eight nominations, but they’re all in technical categories.) The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond Of Matches and Maudie are close behind, with seven nominations apiece.
Aubert, Brault, Foroughi and Walsh were all nominated for achievement in direction, along with Ian Lagarde, whose delightfully weird parable All You Can Eat Buddha scored six nominations in total.
The best actor category has six slots this year, for Maudie’s Ethan Hawke, The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond Of Matches’ Antoine L’Écuyer, Meditation Park’s Tzi Ma, We Are The Others’ Emile Proulx-Cloutier, Boost’s Nabil Rajo and It’s The Heart That Dies Last’s Gabriel Sabourin.
Best actress, meanwhile, holds at five: It’s The Heart That Dies Last’s Denise Filiatrault, Maudie’s Sally Hawkins, Never Steady, Never Still’s Shirley Henderson, Ava’s Mahour Jabbari and The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond Of Matches’ Marine Johnson.
The Ted Rogers best feature documentary award has five nominees this year instead of three: Manic, A Moon Of Nickel And Ice, Resurrecting Hassan, Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World and Unarmed Verses. Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier’s devastating Tragically Hip doc Long Time Running didn’t make the cut, scoring just one nomination for editor Ronald Schlimme.
And the contenders for this year’s John Dunning discovery award are Cory Bowles’s Black Cop, Connor Gaston’s The Devout and Joyce Wong’s Wexford Plaza.
For all the nomination love, there were some curious exceptions: Sarah Kolasky and Adam Garnet Jones’s searing indie Great Great Great and Kyle Rideout and Josh Epstein’s delightful comedy Adventures In Public School were nominated for their screenplays, but nothing else, while Daniel Warth’s Dim The Fluorescents and Molly McGlynn’s Mary Goes Round – two of the year’s strongest first features – were shut out entirely, as were Wayne Wapeemukwa’s Luk’Luk’I , Carlos and Jason Sanchez’s Allure and Alanis Obomsawin’s documentary Our People Will Be Healed, which TIFF placed in this year’s Canada’s Top Ten.
Anne leads TV nominees
In the television section, CBC’s Anne garnered the most garlands, its 13 nominations edging it past CTV’s Cardinal and CBC’s Kim’s Convenience, which pulled 12 nominations apiece. Alias Grace and Schitt’s Creek each landed 11 nominations, while Crave’s Letterkenny and Global’s Mary Kills People got nine.
Orphan Black, last year’s front-runner with 14 nominations, landed just six this year for its final season, including the inevitable (and inarguable) best actress nod for Tatiana Maslany.
Anne, Mary Kills People, 19-2, Pure and Vikings will square off for best dramatic series, while Kim’s Convenience, Letterkenny, Michael: Every Day, Nirvanna The Band The Show, and Schitt’s Creek and Workin’ Moms are up for best comedy series.
Fun fact: Jared Keeso, nominated for best actor and best writing for his Letterkenny work this year, is also the co-star of 19-2.
Less fun fact: the Academy managed to nominate every member of the Kim’s Convenience cast – last year’s best actor winner Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, Jean Yoon, Andrea Bang, Nichole Power and Andrew Phung – while somehow leaving out Simu Liu, who had a terrific season as the Kim family’s conflicted black-sheep son Jung.
And the four series in contention for best variety or sketch comedy are Baroness Von Sketch Show, The Beaverton, Rick Mercer Report and This Hour Has 22 Minutes, which nicely sets up a battle between older and younger sensibilities – a battle that’s also reflected in the best live entertainment special category, where last year’s kind of terrible Howie Mandel-hosted Canadian Screen Awards ceremony is nominated opposite the Juno awards, the iHeartRadio Much Music Video Awards, the Canada Day 150 celebrations and the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Not that the Academy would ever be so gauche as to award its own show, mind you. There are so many other things to honour.
Check out the full list of 2018 nominees here.
The Canadian Screen Awards will be presented in Toronto on March 11 at the Sony Centre For The Performing Arts, in a gala ceremony to be simulcast on CBC Television.
