Canadian films have been stealing the scene in recent years with gems that display the country in all its mosaic-y glory. From a beautifully crafted film like Scarborough, which was the first runner-up for the People’s Choice Award and won the won the Shawn Mendes Foundation Changemaker Award at TIFF 2021, to Night Raiders, a genre film that reminds us of Canada’s past about treatment of Indigenous children, there’s a stellar collection of films that deserve to be seen by the movie-going audiences. Here are 10 best Canadian films that should be on your watch list this year.
10. Ste. Anne
View this video on YouTube
Rhayne Vermette’s hybrid drama Ste. Anne is a poetic and experimental portrait of life on a Métis reserve outside Winnipeg. Vermette stars alongside her real family and members of her own community as they work together to explore what it means to return to one’s roots and try to repair family ties after years of estrangement. Vermette films the picturesque landscape without a hint of romanticism. Long takes let audiences immerse themselves within the land and its inhabitants. Shot on 16mm film and favouring fragmentary impressions in lieu of straightforward narrative scenes, Ste. Anne is a kaleidoscopic riddle. Its power comes in piecing it together.
9. One of Ours
View this video on YouTube
Newcomer Yasmin Mathurin confronts the relationship between representation, identity, and belonging with an expert’s hand in her feature debut. One of Ours is a documentary about Josiah Wilson, a Haitian-born Canadian who was adopted by a mixed Heiltsuk/settler family and was a star player on the all-Native basketball team until officials challenged his right to play by invoking a blood quantum. Mathurin interrogates the politics of identity by observing the Wilsons as they fight for Josiah’s place in the Heiltsuk community and other matters within the family’s complex and multifaceted make-up. She captures moments of poignant intimacy by embedding herself within the lives of her characters and developing genuine bonds, trust, and mutual respect.
8. Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy
View this video on YouTube
Shot over five years and narrated by director Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, this doc showcases the work of community members with substance-use disorder and the devastating impact of the fentanyl crisis. Tailfeathers takes a gentle approach to sensitively show personal, heartbreaking stories of the community and how the health professionals in the Kainai First Nation bring hope and change through harm reduction to Blackfoot people. It’s a thought-provoking piece that’s well-told and drives home the message of treating addiction with compassion—kímmapiiyipitssini is a Blackfoot word that means giving kindness to each other.
7. Learn to Swim
View this video on YouTube
Toronto filmmaker Thyrone Tommy’s first feature is a solid attempt at exploring love and loss through contemporary jazz music. The film floats between the present tense brimming with grief and the past that’s swirling with dreamy romance—it’s a visual treat, especially when matched with the cinematography. It certainly is an impressive feature debut by a promising writer/director, who previously helmed the short Mariner.
6. Wildhood
View this video on YouTube
Wildhood is the most significant queer Canadian film since Xavier Dolan’s breakthrough I Killed My Mother. Bretten Hannam’s sophomore feature proudly creates space for Two-Spirited voices and stories. It’s a stirring road movie about a Mi’kmaw teen, Link (Phillip Lewitski), who undergoes a sexual awakening while fleeing his abusive father, searching for his estranged mother, and encountering a striking Indigenous dancer (Joshua Odjick) along the way. Embracing the natural elements that Link encounters during his odyssey—mud, water, rocks, and grit—Hannam draws upon the power of the landscape and the legacy of the people who previously walked the Earth. With palpably rawness, vulnerability, and authenticity, Wildhood intimately connects Link’s persona growth within a larger assertion of Indigenous resilience.
5. Beans
View this video on YouTube
Tracey Deer makes an assured feature dramatic debut by crafting a poignant coming of age story amid the 78-day standoff of the Oka Crisis. The film sees the crisis in which the Mohawk defended their ancestral land through the eyes of 12-year-old Beans (Kiawentiio) as she draws strength from her mother (Rainbow Dickerson) to defy the life that was expected for her. Deer draws revelatory performances from her cast of young actors while drawing upon her own experience growing up in Beans’ shoes during this landmark event and does proud the women who raised her. Beans is an ode to the women who fight, stand their ground, and nurture the next generation.
4. Akilla’s Escape
View this video on YouTube
This crime-noir from Jamaican-Canadian filmmaker Charles Officer follows Akilla Brown (Saul Williams) who captures a fifteen-year-old Jamaican boy Sheppard (Thamela Mpumlwana) in the aftermath of an armed robbery and realizes that he too is part of the generational violence and flashbacks to his past show how he was also pushed down a life of crime. Having Mpumlwana play both Sheppard and a younger Akilla was a smart move to add nuance to the script and make it more compelling. Williams gives a restrained performance that’s both powerful and poetic. Mpumlwana is also well cast as he plays both roles with sincerity.
3. Night Raiders
View this video on YouTube
Night Raiders is part of the new wave of Indigenous sci-fi that uses genre space for addressing themes like intergenerational trauma and oppression within a clever dystopian thriller. Danis Goulet educates and entertains as she tackles historic abuses of native peoples. It’s a well-told female-led film—not just the mother and daughter at the heart of the film, but the main camp Elder and the Cree camp leader are also women. She successfully shines a light on the role of women who led the Indigenous resistance movements. Solid performances from Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Brooklyn Letexier-Hart elevate a script that’s haunted with Canada’s grim past treatment of Indigenous children.
2. Drunken Birds
View this video on YouTube
Canada made a smart choice sending Drunken Birds as its Oscar submission for Best International Feature this year. This enigmatic puzzle follows Willy, a Mexican runaway played by Roma’s Jorge Antonio Guerrero, as his epic search for his lover, Marlena, leads him to a Quebecois farm. The migrant worker setting is merely the context, however, for intersecting storylines about the crazy things people do for love. As Willy searches for Marlena, his quest weaves through the journeys of the family that owns the farm. Love is in the air as director Ivan Grbovic and cinematographer/co-writer Sara Mishara capture life on the farm at the beginning and end of the workdays. They bathe Drunken Birds in the intoxicating glow of magic hour cinematography. Light touches of magical touches and surrealism—a Formula-1 racer whizzing through downtown Montreal, a visit from a former lover—invite audiences to question their surroundings and reconsider how life appears on the surface. This visually sumptuous film invites audiences to look at stories that are hidden within the Canadian landscape. As Willy’s quest leads him across borders, fields, and cities to find Marlena, Drunken Birds creates a stirring fable about the universal impulses that connect us.
1. Scarborough
View this video on YouTube
This beautiful, poignant film by Shasha Nakhai and Rich Williamson gives a voice to the racialized and under-privileged community by showcasing how the system has failed these low-income families. The documentary-style filmmaking adds a rawness to it, especially being shot from the waist up to bring in the children’s POV, adding innocence to the heartfelt poverty piece. The film is a love letter to a community that’s culturally and economically diverse and has been home to many immigrant families. The film shows that Scarborough is more than just the bad rep media has tainted it with over the years. All three young actors bring warmth and compassion to their roles and leave you with memories of childhood bliss.
