The 100 best Canadian films ever made

Nowadays, asking someone what their favourite Canadian movie is could be a come-on or a threat. Yes, homegrown cinema is having a true global moment, with our filmmakers garnering raves and the box-office receipts to match. But the industry is also facing enough obstacles – including last month’s shocking reversal from Ottawa over the Online Streaming Act – that our artists need to put up far more than their elbows to fight their way through the system.

To rank the 100 best Canadian films ever made, then, offers a Canada Day-timed counterargument to the direction that the political winds appear to be blowing. These are movies that inspire, transfix, beguile and enthrall – stories that build a culture, one which can never be broken, subsumed or offered up as a bargaining chip. And they only exist because we all put our money where our mouths are, investing in many of them through Canada’s publicly funded arts institutions.

Tell us what you think: What Canadian movie is missing from this list?

This is also why some obvious contenders – such as A History of Violence, Turning Red and Women Talking – don’t qualify for this particular list, having been made largely with U.S. money. Primarily, the criteria here is key Canadian creative talent plus Canadian financing, with special dispensation for the rare movie that was partially filmed outside the country. And when the exact funding of a film couldn’t be thoroughly decoded, I deferred to the Genie and Canadian Screen Awards. If a movie was Canadian enough for those bodies, it was Canadian enough for me.

Oh, and by the way: This list is 100 per cent, completely, intensely subjective – you will very likely disagree with my selections. That’s the fun part of list-making. But as every Canadian moviegoer has surely muttered while watching an endless Cineplex pre-show, enough introduction already. Let’s get to the movies.

The Best Pick Their Best

Deepa Mehta

Monsieur Lazhar
I Heard the Mermaids Singing
Incendies
My Old Ass
The Things You Kill
In Flames
C.R.A.Z.Y.
Away from Her
Léolo
Exotica

Chandler Levack

Love that Boy
Geographies of Solitude
Tu dors Nicole
Crime Wave
A Married Couple
Stories We Tell
Crash
I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing
Last Night
C.R.A.Z.Y.

Clement Virgo

(In alphabetical order: “I love them all equally”)

Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner
Incendies
I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing
Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance
Léolo
Nurse.Fighter.Boy
Roadkill
Stories We Tell
Videodrome

Guy Maddin

(In alphabetical order: “May I add that it was EXTREMELY HARD to narrow this down to 10.”)

The Adjuster
Crime Wave
Dead Ringers
Last Night
Léolo
Roadkill
Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould
Universal Language
Wavelengths
Women Talking

Kazik Radwanski

(In alphabetical order)

88:88
100 Sunset
Blue Heron
Concrete Valley
Dead Lover
The Maiden
MS Slavic 7
Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie
Queens of the Qing Dynasty
Tales of Two Who Dreamt

Atom Egoyan

I resist listing 10 “favourite films,” especially given the extraordinary crop of new filmmakers producing outstanding work. I’ll instead focus on early influences, ranging from Norman McLaren’s shorts to Michael Snow’s Wavelength and of course David’s Videodrome and Dead Ringers (though Crash is stunning).

There was also a forgotten feature from Vancouver that was the first Canadian independent film I saw in a cinema in Victoria (Zale Dalen’s Skip Tracer in 1977) and then two huge moments in 1982. The first was when Jean-Pierre Lefebvre won the Critic Prize in Cannes with Les fleurs sauvage and then when Peter Mettler kicked off the Toronto New Wave when his first feature Scissere got into TIFF.

There was also the Quebecois feminist feature by Mireille Dansereau, La Vie Rêvée, from 1972 and then the moment when Patricia Rozema’s first feature I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing won Le Prix de la Jeunesse in Cannes in 1987. This was the first time someone who I knew skyrocketed into that sort of spotlight. When I was first in Cannes in 1989, I went to the premiere of Denys Arcand’s Jesus of Montreal and that was unworldly. I realized that’s where I dreamt of showing my films so that was another huge moment.

I also need to say that Nobody Waved Good-bye was the first Canadian film I ever saw. The local NFB branch in Victoria let me borrow a 16 mm print and a projector so I brought it home and screened it at my house. Long before home video. Yes, I’m that old. Again, I can’t express how excited I’ve been by recent Canadian films, many of them first features.

Top 10 Canadian-ish Movies

(Canadian elements, but mostly American money)

American Psycho (Dir. Mary Harron)
A Christmas Story (Dir. Bob Clark)
Dirty Work (Dir. Bob Saget)
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Dir. Edgar Wright)
Navalny (Dir. Daniel Roher)
Nightmare Alley (Dir. Guillermo del Toro)
Women Talking (Dir. Sarah Polley)
The Fly (Dir. David Cronenberg)
Turning Red (Dir. Domee Shi)
A History of Violence (Dir. David Cronenberg)

-Barry Hertz