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 Lightbox cultural centre, located in Downtown Toronto.
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.
Martin Villeneuve is a Canadian screenwriter, producer, director, actor, and art director. He was nominated at the Canadian Screen Award in 2013 for Best Adapted Screenplay, for Mars et Avril, his feature film debut. He is also known for The 12 Tasks of Imelda, his second feature film released in 2022, in which he portrays his own grandmother, and for his animated series Red Ketchup premiering in 2023. Villeneuve previously worked for Cirque du Soleil as an artistic director for commercials and films.
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.
Heather Young is a Canadian filmmaker based in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
Hurt is a 2015 Canadian documentary film, directed by Alan Zweig. The film explores the troubled life of Steve Fonyo, the Canadian amputee athlete who completed a cross-Canada run that was known as the "Journey for Lives" to raise funds for cancer research in 1984 and 1985.
Bacon and God's Wrath is a Canadian short documentary film, which premiered at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. Directed by Sol Friedman and mixing animation with live action interview footage, the film centres on Razie Brownstone, a 90-year-old Jewish woman who, after undergoing a crisis of faith which has led her to reject many of the tenets of her religion, is preparing to cook and eat bacon for the first time in her life.
Blind Vaysha is a 2016 animated short by Theodore Ushev, produced by Marc Bertrand for the National Film Board of Canada, with the participation of ARTE France. Based on a story by Georgi Gospodinov, the film tells the story of a girl who sees the past out of her left eye and the future from her right—and so is unable to live in the present. Montreal actress Caroline Dhavernas performed the narration for the film, in both its French and English language versions. The film incorporates music from Bulgarian musician and composer Kottarashky and is his and Ushev's fourth collaboration.
The Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television's Award for Best Short Documentary is an annual Canadian film award, presented to a film judged to be the year's best short documentary film. Prior to 2012 the award was presented as part of the Genie Awards program; since 2012 it has been presented as part of the expanded Canadian Screen Awards.
Tess Girard is a Canadian filmmaker and cinematographer.
The Little Deputy is a Canadian short documentary film, directed by Trevor Anderson and starring Luke Oswald, released in 2015.
Keep a Modest Head is a Canadian short documentary film, directed by Deco Dawson and released in 2012. The film is a tribute to Jean Benoît, a Canadian artist often credited as "the last surrealist".
Anthropocene: The Human Epoch is a 2018 Canadian documentary film made by Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier and Edward Burtynsky. It explores the emerging concept of a geological epoch called the Anthropocene, defined by the impact of humanity on natural development.
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.
Fauve is a Canadian short drama film, directed by Jérémy Comte and released in 2018. The film centres on two boys looking for adventure near an open pit mine, who are soon drawn into a dangerous situation as their power game spins out of control.
Jasmin Mozaffari is a Canadian film director and screenwriter. She won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Director at the 7th Canadian Screen Awards in 2019 for her debut feature film Firecrackers.
No Crying at the Dinner Table is a 2019 Canadian short documentary film, directed by Carol Nguyen. An exploration of the common stigma in Asian families against expressing emotional vulnerability, the film centres on interviews Nguyen conducted with her family, played back around the dinner table at a family gathering.
Acadiana is a 2019 Canadian short documentary film directed by Guillaume Fournier, Samuel Matteau and Yannick Nolin. The film explores the changing face of Cajun culture in the United States, and its roots in the Acadian culture of Canada, through a profile of the Crawfish Festival in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. The film was the second part of a trilogy by the directors about Cajun culture, following Let the Good Times Roll in 2017 and preceding Belle River in 2022.
Day 40 is a Canadian animated short film, directed by Sol Friedman and released in 2014. The film is a retelling of the story of Noah's Ark, told from the perspective of the animals.
Ivete Lucas is a filmmaker, documentarian, producer, editor, and director based in Austin, Texas. Her work includes the documentary short films The Curse and the Jubilee, The Send-Off, Roadside Attraction, The Rabbit Hunt, Skip Day, Happiness is a Journey and the documentary feature film Pahokee.
