In Toronto, a Spotlight on Canadian Films
There is a stereotype about Canadian movies that watching local productions can feel more like a dutiful task than a carefree escape.
“A bit like homework,” said Sonya Yokota William, director of the Network of Independent Canadian Exhibitors, an organization whose members include indie cinemas, film festivals and programmers. But that view is changing fast, she said. Nowhere is that more apparent than at the Toronto International Film Festival, which wraps up its 50th year on Sunday. The festival’s milestone comes amid a groundswell of national pride as Canadians cope with punishing tariffs by President Trump and focus on supporting all things homegrown. This has brought an increased appetite for Canadian films among local audiences, Ms. William told me. To satisfy it, her organization this week debuted the Canadian Movie Marketplace, a database that provides information about Canadian films to exhibitors and makes it easier for local theaters to book them. Around 400 titles have already been added to the platform. Indie theater operators have shown particular interest in the tool, she said, seeing it as a way to help them navigate a highly centralized movie theater market. About 75 percent of national box office revenues go to Cineplex, the Canadian screening giant, a drastically higher share than in other global markets. By comparison, AMC Entertainment, the largest theater chain in the United States, has two main competitors, and industry analysts put its market share at about 30 percent of the country’s total. “I see audiences really claiming and celebrating Canadian films, and being interested in a film when it’s marketed as Canadian in a way that maybe they weren’t before,” Ms. William said. For this edition of the Canada Letter, I attended the Toronto film festival with an eye for Canadian movies. (Manohla Dargis, a film critic at The Times, reported from the festival. Here are her highlights: It’s a “good news” story.)
My first screening was for the premiere of “Still Single,” a documentary that follows Masaki Saito, the eccentric chef behind Canada’s first restaurant to receive two Michelin stars. The restaurant, Sushi Masaki Saito, which costs 780 Canadian dollars, or about $560, per person, serves in the Japanese dining tradition of omakase, where there is no menu and the chef dictates the meal. This impulse for calling the shots was apparently hard to shake for Mr. Saito, who narrated his preference for the film’s opening sequence, called “cut” and often questioned the footage choices of the filmmakers, Jamal Burger and Jukan Tateisi. Mr. Saito made an appearance after the screening, deflecting audience questions with humor. “As you saw, it’s hard to get answers out of him,” Mr. Burger, the film’s Canadian co-director, told me outside the theater on King Street during the second day of the festival. Nearby, sushi chefs from Mr. Saito’s more affordable omakase restaurant, MSSM, had set up a long sushi counter to serve free bites. “I wish I found film sooner,” said Mr. Burger, 32. “Film is such a powerful tool to tell stories, bring people together and help them look at the world a different way. So I’m just happy that I’m here now.” The film introduces some of the people in Mr. Saito’s orbit with title cards — the jaded sous-chef, the partying new hire, the diligent hostess (though not in those words) — and traces how their kitchen careers grow and diverge with that of their boss. The documentary spans multiple cities, at horse racing tracks, fish markets, modest Japanese apartments and boozy Toronto parties. Mr. Saito is shown making sushi, warming up the rice to the perfect temperature by passing a small mound of it gently between his palms, like a magician performing sleight of hand.
Here are a few other Canadian titles to look out for. “Little Lorraine” Lobster fishers are tangled in a cocaine-smuggling ring in a movie inspired by events that took place in Little Lorraine, Nova Scotia, in the 1980s. If you’re in Halifax, this film and several other Canadian titles shown at TIFF are playing at the Atlantic International Film Festival until Sept. 17. “Blue Heron” A Hungarian family immigrates to Vancouver Island but can’t quite settle into a rhythm because of the oldest child’s erratic outbursts, which point to a behavioral disorder. The quest to help him haunts his sister into her adult life. The laconic film borrows from the director Sophy Romvari’s childhood. “Mile End Kicks” This blithe comedy set in Montreal (the rivalry with Toronto is a recurring theme), from the director Chandler Levack, follows Grace Pine, a music journalist, on a wayward journey of love and self-discovery. The title takes its name from the trendy Mile End neighborhood. “Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband)” Set 4,000 years ago in the high Arctic, this film from the Inuk director Zacharias Kunuk weaves a tale of shamanic magic and an arranged marriage gone wrong. The script is in Inuktitut, an Inuit language that is experiencing a revival in Canada’s north. “John Candy: I Like Me” John Candy, the Canadian comedian whose death from a heart attack in 1994 sent shock waves through Hollywood, is the subject of a new documentary directed by Colin Hanks and produced by Ryan Reynolds. It will stream on Amazon Prime on Oct. 10. Trans Canada
Vjosa Isai is a reporter at The Times based in Toronto. How are we doing? Like this email?
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