David Paul Cronenberg is a Canadian film director and screenwriter. He is a principal originator of the body horror genre, with his films exploring visceral bodily transformation, infectious diseases, and the intertwining of the psychological, physical, and technological. Cronenberg is best known for exploring these themes through sci-fi horror films such as Shivers (1975), Scanners (1981), Videodrome (1983) and The Fly (1986), though he has also directed dramas, psychological thrillers and gangster films.
Vincent Cassel is a French actor. He has earned a César Award and a Canadian Screen Award as well as nominations for a European Film Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
Spider is a 2002 psychological thriller film produced and directed by David Cronenberg and based on the 1990 novel of the same name by Patrick McGrath, who also wrote the screenplay.
Crash is a 1996 Canadian drama film written, produced and directed by David Cronenberg, based on J. G. Ballard's 1973 novel of the same name. Starring James Spader, Deborah Kara Unger, Elias Koteas, Holly Hunter and Rosanna Arquette, it follows a film producer who, after surviving a car crash, becomes involved with a group of symphorophiliacs who are aroused by car crashes and tries to rekindle his sexual relationship with his wife.
Sarah Lynn Gadon is a Canadian actress. She began her acting career guest-starring in a number of television series, such as Are You Afraid of the Dark? (1999), Mutant X (2002), and Dark Oracle (2004). She also worked as a voice actress on various television productions. Gadon gained recognition for her roles in David Cronenberg's films A Dangerous Method (2011), Cosmopolis (2012), and Maps to the Stars (2014). She also starred in Denis Villeneuve's thriller Enemy (2013), the period drama Belle (2013), and the action horror film Dracula Untold (2014).
Dusty Mancinelli is a Canadian independent filmmaker from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Mancinelli is primarily a director of short films. Several of his films have been shown at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and other notable film festivals worldwide, winning numerous awards. Since 2017, he has collaborated with Madeleine Sims-Fewer. Their debut feature film Violation was shown at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival.
Antiviral is a 2012 science fiction horror film written and directed by Brandon Cronenberg. The film competed in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. Cronenberg re-edited the film after the festival to make it tighter, trimming nearly six minutes out of the film. The revised film was first shown at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival, and was a co-winner, alongside Jason Buxton's Blackbird, of the festival's Best Canadian First Feature Film award.
Brandon Cronenberg is a Canadian director and screenwriter. He is the son of renowned filmmaker David Cronenberg and the brother of Caitlin Cronenberg. He is known for his science fiction horror films Antiviral (2012), Possessor (2020) and Infinity Pool (2023). He has won several accolades for his work.
Maps to the Stars is a 2014 internationally co-produced satirical drama film directed by David Cronenberg, and starring Julianne Moore, Mia Wasikowska, John Cusack, Robert Pattinson, Olivia Williams, Sarah Gadon, and Evan Bird. The screenplay was written by Bruce Wagner, who had written a novel entitled Dead Stars based on the Maps to the Stars script, after initial plans for making the film with Cronenberg fell through.
Violent is a 2014 Canadian-Norwegian drama film directed by Andrew Huculiak and created by the Vancouver-based production company Amazing Factory Productions. The film acts as a companion to the Vancouver band We Are the City's album of the same name. Though the film features an original score by the band, none of the band's songs are featured in the film.
The Toronto International Film Festival Award for Best Canadian Short Film, formerly also known as the NFB John Spotton Award, is an annual film award, presented by the Toronto International Film Festival to a film judged to be the best Canadian short film of the festival. As of 2017, the award is sponsored by International Watch Company and known as the "IWC Short Cuts Award for Best Canadian Short Film".
The 43rd annual Toronto International Film Festival was held from September 6 to 16, 2018. In June 2018, the TIFF organizers announced a program to ensure that at least 20 percent of all film critics and journalists given press accreditation to the festival were members of underrepresented groups, such as women and people of color. The People's Choice Award was won by Green Book, directed by Peter Farrelly.
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.
The 44th annual Toronto International Film Festival was held from 5 to 15 September 2019. The opening gala was the documentary film Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band, directed by Daniel Roher, and the festival closed with a screening of the biographical film Radioactive, directed by Marjane Satrapi.
Possessor is a 2020 science fiction psychological horror film written and directed by Brandon Cronenberg. It stars Andrea Riseborough and Christopher Abbott, with Rossif Sutherland, Tuppence Middleton, Sean Bean, and Jennifer Jason Leigh in supporting roles. Riseborough portrays an assassin who performs her assignments through possessing the bodies of other individuals, but finds herself fighting to control the body of her current host (Abbott).
One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk is a Canadian drama film, directed by Zacharias Kunuk and released in 2019. The film dramatizes the true story of Noah Piugattuk, an Inuk hunter, over the day in 1961 when he was fatefully approached by a Canadian government agent who encouraged him to give up the traditional Inuit lifestyle and assimilate into a conventionally modern settlement.
Deragh Campbell is a Canadian actress and filmmaker. She is known for her acclaimed performances in independent Canadian cinema. Her collaborations with filmmaker Sofia Bohdanowicz—Never Eat Alone (2016), Veslemøy's Song (2018), MS Slavic 7 (2019), and Point and Line to Plane (2020)—have screened at film festivals internationally. Campbell has also starred in three of Kazik Radwanski's feature films; she played a small role in How Heavy This Hammer (2015), the lead role in Anne at 13,000 Ft. (2019), and opposite Matt Johnson in Matt and Mara (2024).
Chris Chong Chan Fui is a Malaysian artist and filmmaker, who has worked in both Malaysia and Canada. He is most noted for his short films Pool (Kolam), which won the Toronto International Film Festival Award for Best Canadian Short Film at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival, and Block B, which won the same award at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival.
Pool is a Malaysian-Canadian short film, directed by Chris Chong Chan Fui and released in 2007. The film depicts a group of children playing in a swimming pool in Aceh, Indonesia, working through their fear of water following the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.
The 2020 Toronto International Film Festival, the 45th event in the Toronto International Film Festival series, was held from September 10 to 21, 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Toronto, the festival took place primarily on an online streaming platform, although limited in-person screenings still took place within the constraints of social distancing restrictions.
