Brian D. Johnson is a Canadian journalist and filmmaker, best known as an entertainment reporter and film critic for Maclean's . [1]
He first joined the magazine in 1985. In early 2014, Johnson announced his retirement as a full-time staff member of the magazine, [2] although he remains an occasional freelance contributor. He has also contributed to Rolling Stone and The Globe and Mail , and has won three National Magazine Awards for his writing. [3]
He was a founding member of the Toronto Film Critics Association, and served as the organization's president from 2009 to 2017. [4]
Johnson has also published the poetry book Marzipan Lies (1974), the novel Volcano Days (1994) [1] and the non-fiction book Brave Films, Wild Nights: 25 Years of Festival Fever (2000), a history of the Toronto International Film Festival. [5]
As a filmmaker, he directed the short films Tell Me Everything (2006) [6] and Yesno (2010). [7] His first feature film as a documentarian, Al Purdy Was Here , debuted at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, [8] where it finished third in the voting for the Grolsch People's Choice Documentary Award. [9]
His documentary film The Colour of Ink is slated to premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival. [10]
He is married to writer and broadcaster Marni Jackson. [5]
The Toronto International Film Festival is one of the most prestigious and largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, founded in 1976 and taking place each September. It is also a permanent destination for film culture operating out of the TIFF Bell Lightbox cultural centre, located in Downtown Toronto.
Bruce McDonald is a Canadian film and television director, writer, and producer. Born in Kingston, Ontario, he rose to prominence in the 1980s as part of the loosely-affiliated Toronto New Wave.
Ingrid Veninger is a Canadian actress, writer, director, producer, and film professor at York University. Veninger began her career in show business as a child actor in commercials and on television; as a teen, she was featured in the CBC series Airwaves (1986–1987) and the CBS series Friday the 13th: The Series (1987–1990). In the 1990s, she branched out into producing, and, in 2003, she founded her own production company, pUNK Films, through which she began to work on her own projects as a writer and director.
The Toronto Film Critics Association (TFCA) is an organization of film critics from Toronto-based publications. As of 1999, the TFCA is a member of the FIPRESCI.
Rob Stewart was a Canadian photographer, filmmaker and conservationist. He was best known for making and directing the documentary films Sharkwater and Revolution. He drowned at the age of 37 while scuba diving in Florida, filming Sharkwater Extinction.
Alan Zweig is a Canadian documentary filmmaker known for often using film to explore his own life.
Connor William Jessup is a Canadian actor, writer, and director. He is known for his roles as Ben Mason on the TNT science fiction television series Falling Skies (2011–2015), Taylor Blaine and Coy Henson in the ABC anthology series American Crime (2016–2017), and Tyler Locke in the Netflix series Locke & Key (2020–2022). He has also starred in feature films, most notably in the award-winning Blackbird (2012) and Closet Monster (2015).
Stories We Tell is a 2012 Canadian documentary film written and directed by Sarah Polley and produced by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). The film explores her family's secrets—including one intimately related to Polley's own identity. Stories We Tell premiered August 29, 2012 at the 69th Venice International Film Festival, then played at the 39th Telluride Film Festival and the 37th Toronto International Film Festival. In 2015, it was added to the Toronto International Film Festival's list of the top 10 Canadian films of all time, at number 10. It was also named the 70th greatest film since 2000 in a 2016 critics' poll by BBC.
The Rogers Best Canadian Film Award is presented annually by the Toronto Film Critics Association to the film judged by the organization's members as the year's best Canadian film. In 2012, the cash prize accompanying the award was increased to $100,000, making it the largest arts award in Canada. Each year, two runners-up also receive $5,000. The award is funded and presented by Rogers Communications, which is a founding sponsor of the association's awards gala.
Albert Shin is a Canadian filmmaker, best known for his critically acclaimed Canadian Screen Award-nominated films In Her Place (2014) and Disappearance at Clifton Hill (2019). He works frequently with collaborator Igor Drljaca.
Andrew Cividino is a Canadian film director and screenwriter. He is best known for his feature film directorial debut Sleeping Giant, which premiered at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, and for his frequent work as a director on the Emmy winning comedy Schitt's Creek, for which he won a Primetime Emmy at the 72nd Primetime Emmy Awards.
The Toronto International Film Festival Award for Best Canadian Film is an annual juried film award, presented by the Toronto International Film Festival to a film judged to be the best Canadian feature film.
Adam Benzine is a British filmmaker and journalist. He received critical appraisal and widespread acclaim for his HBO documentary Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah, which examined the life and work of French director Claude Lanzmann. The film earned Benzine an Oscar nomination in the Best Documentary category at the 88th Academy Awards, in addition to nominations from the Grierson Awards, the Canadian Screen Awards, the IDA Documentary Awards, the Banff Rockie Awards and the Cinema Eye Honors.
Matt Johnson is a Canadian actor and filmmaker. He first attracted accolades for his low-budget independent feature films, including The Dirties (2013), which won Best Narrative Feature at the Slamdance Film Festival, and Operation Avalanche (2016), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Johnson achieved widespread acclaim for his third feature film, BlackBerry (2023), which premiered in competition at the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival.
Larry Weinstein is a Canadian film director of theatrical and television documentaries, performance films, and dramas. The majority of his films centre on musical subjects and the depiction of the creative process, while his other subjects range from the horrors of war to the pleasures of football.
Kazik Radwanski is a Canadian film director and screenwriter. His early short films have been cited as part of the New Canadian Cinema movement. He made his feature film directorial debut in 2012 with Tower. His second feature film, How Heavy This Hammer (2015), screened at film festivals around the world and received critical acclaim. His third feature film, Anne at 13,000 Ft. (2019), starring Deragh Campbell, won the Toronto Film Critics Association's $100,000 Rogers Best Canadian Film Award in 2021.
The Toronto International Film Festival People's Choice Award is an annual film award, presented by the Toronto International Film Festival to the film rated as the year's most popular film with festival audiences. Past sponsors of the award have included Cadillac and Grolsch.
The Platform Prize is an annual film award, presented by the Toronto International Film Festival to films of "high artistic merit that also demonstrate a strong directorial vision." Introduced in 2015, the award is presented to a film, selected by an international jury of three prominent filmmakers or actors, from among the films screened in the Platform program. The program normally screens between eight and twelve films; only one winner is selected each year, although as with TIFF's other juried awards the jurors have the discretion to give honorable mentions to other films besides the overall winner.
Marni Jackson is a Canadian journalist. She is most noted for her 1992 memoir The Mother Zone, which was a shortlisted finalist for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour in 1993, and her 2002 non-fiction book Pain: The Fifth Vital Sign, which was shortlisted for the Pearson Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction.
Canada's Top Ten is an annual honour, compiled by the Toronto International Film Festival and announced in December each year to identify and promote the year's best Canadian films. The list was first introduced in 2001 as an initiative to help publicize Canadian films.