National Canadian Film Day: This year, the movies are coming to a home-theatre near you
Wednesday, April 22 is National Canadian Film Day - an event that, in less-viral times, would be celebrated by the screening of notable Canadian films in theatres across the country, a project of the charity REEL Canada, which brings films to schools.
Said theatres being dark, National Canadian Film Day is now a nationally streamed event. Starting Wednesday, six of the country’s film distributors - Elevation Pictures, eOne, LevelFILM, MK2 Mile End, Mongrel Media, and Pacific Northwest Pictures – will curate a program of past and present Canadian films on Apple TV, Telus, Cineplex Store, Rogers and Bell.
Prices vary by service and by film.
The full list is on the bottom, but here’s five we’re happy to recommend.
Elle-Maija Tailfeathers and Violet Nelson in The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open
The Song of Names - François Girard (The Red Violin and Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould) ably adapts Norman Lebrecht’s novel about a young violinist/Holocaust-escapee who abandons his big debut to begin a mysterious voyage of self-discovery. The real triumph, however, belongs to soundtrack great Howard Shore, who brings to life a “Song of the Dead” that memorializes Treblinka victims.
The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open - A celebrated work, having been named one of the top-10 Canadian movies of 2018 by the Toronto International Film Festival, and winner of the Toronto Film Critics association’s $100,000 Rogers Best Canadian Film Award. A woman Áila (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, who also co-directed the film with Kathleen Hepburn) is on her way home from the doctor’s office in East Vancouver when she comes across Rosie (Violet Nelson), a pregnant young woman, being threatened by her boyfriend. Our Thom Ernst called this “real-time” drama, “subtle, patient and wholly authentic.”
And the Birds Rained Down - Another TIFF 2019 Top 10 film, directed by Louise Archambault from the novel by Jocelyne Saucier. It’s an odd and affecting film about love among the elderly in a small Quebec town that still suffers the trauma of a wildfire that devastated the place a generation earlier.
The Grizzlies – An excellent example of how a trope – in this case, a white coach who shows kids from a devastated community to believe in themselves via sport – can be elevated by its treatment. Based on a true story about a lacrosse team from a town in Nunavut with the highest rate of suicide in the nation, this film by Miranda de Pencier, written by Graham Yost, stars Ben Schnetzer as the coach opposite a cast of mainly first-time actors from Nunavut who shine.
Anthropocene – The third of Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier and Edward Burtynsky’s trilogy of globe-trotting documentaries about the effects of man writ large upon the Earth. It ties the movies’ message neatly and disconcertingly under the rubric of a newly-named epoch where all the processes on the planet are informed, marked or marred by human activity. Narrated by Alicia Vikander, it is mordantly beautiful in its depiction of the most polluted city in Russia, the largest landfill in Africa, etc.
THE LIST
Elevation Pictures
HYENA ROAD, directed by Paul Gross, starring Rossif Sutherland and Allan Hawco
INDIAN HORSE, directed by Stephen Campanelli, starring Forrest Goodluck and Sladen Peltier
ROOM, directed by Lenny Abrahamson, starring Academy Award-winner Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay
RUN THIS TOWN, directed by Ricky Tollman, starring Mena Massoud, Nina Dobrev and Ben Platt
THE SONG OF NAMES, directed by François Girard, starring Tim Roth and Clive Owen
eOne
BIRTHMARKED, directed by Emanuel Hoss-Desmarais, starring Matthew Goode, Toni Collette and Suzanne Clément
THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS, directed by Lone Scherfig, starring Zoe Kazan, Andrea Riseborough, Tahar Rahim, Jay Baruchel and Bill Nighy
THE YOUNG AND PRODIGIOUS T.S SPIVET, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, starring Helena Bonham Carter, Judy Davis and Callum Keith Rennie
THE 9th LIFE OF LOUIS DRAX, directed by Alexandre Aja, starring Jamie Dornan, Sarah Gadon and Aaron Paul
LevelFILM
BANG BANG BABY, directed by Jeffrey St. Jules, starring Jane Levy, Justin Chatwin, Peter Stormare and Kristin Bruun
DIM THE FLUORESCENTS, directed by Daniel Warth, starring Claire Armstrong and Naomi Skwarna
EDGE OF WINTER, directed by Rob Connolly, starring Tom Holland and Joel Kinnaman
SUCK IT UP, directed by Jordan Canning, starring Grace Glowicki and Erin Margurite Carter
THE BODY REMEMBERS WHEN THE WORLD BROKE OPEN, directed by Kathleen Hepburn and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, starring Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, Violet Nelson, Charlie Hannah, and Barbara Eve Harris
MK2 Mile End
AND THE BIRDS RAINED DOWN (IL PLEUVAIT DES OISEAUX) directed by Louise Archambault
Mongrel Media
WATER, directed by Deepa Mehta, starring Seema Biswas, Lisa Ray, John Abraham and Sarala
THE GRIZZLIES, directed by Miranda de Pencier, starring Ben Schnetzer, Will Sasso, Paul Nutarariaq, Anna Lambe,Tantoo Cardinal, Emerald MacDonald and Booboo Stewart
MAUDIE, directed by Aisling Walsh, starring Sally Hawkins and Ethan Hawke
BROOKLYN, directed by John Crowley, starring Saoirse Ronan, Domhnall Gleeson and Emory Cohen, with Jim Broadbent and Julie Walters
ANTHROPOCENE, directed by Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier and Edward Burtynsky. Narrated by: Alicia Vikander
Pacific Northwest Pictures
CANADIAN STRAIN, written and directed by Geordie Sabbagh and starring Jess Salgueiro
DRONE, written and directed by Jason Bourque and starring Sean Bean
FALLS AROUND HER, written and directed by Darlene Naponse and starring Tantoo Cardinal
LAVENDER, directed by Ed Gass-Donnelly and written by Colin Frizzell and Ed Gass-Donnelly and starring Abbie Cornish with music by Sarah Neufel and Colin Stetson
BEN’S AT HOME, directed by Mars Horodyski and written by Dan Abramovici and Mars Horodyski