JANUARY 17-19, 24-27, 29

The year’s best Canadian films are in the spotlight in The Cinematheque’s annual presentation of Canada’s Top Ten. Established in 2001 by the Toronto International Film Festival, this celebration of excellence in our national cinema showcases the year’s ten best Canadian feature-length films and ten best Canadian short films as chosen by two separate independent panels of filmmakers, festival programmers, journalists, academics, and industry professionals drawn from across the country. The Cinematheque is pleased to present the panels’ distinguished selections for 2013.

Members of this year’s feature panel were: Daniel Cockburn, Toronto-based filmmaker, writer, and video artist; Liz Czach, Associate Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta, and a former Canadian film programmer at TIFF; Simon Ennis, Toronto-based writer-director of the feature You Might as Well Live and the documentary Lunarcy!; Martin Katz, Toronto-based film producer and founder of Prospero Pictures; Anita Lee, producer with the National Film Board of Canada and the founder of the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival; Jason Ryle, Executive Director of Toronto’s imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival; and Alison Zimmer, Coordinator for Film Circuit, TIFF’s programming outreach division.

Panellists for this year’s selection of short films were: Rafael Katigbak, Montreal-born writer and Canadian editor of Vice magazine; Nathan Morlando, Toronto writer-director of Edwin Boyd: Citizen Gangster and co-founder of Euclid 431 Pictures; Magali Simard, Manager of Film Programmes at TIFF Bell Lightbox; Mazdak Taebi, Toronto-based writer-director of Mercy and the forthcoming Mitra; and David Weaver, Toronto-based writer-director of Century Hotel and The Samaritan.

Please Note: Two features chosen for Canada’s Top Ten 2013, The F Word and Gabrielle, were not available for our presentation due to conflicts with their theatrical release plans.

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FEATURE-LENGTH FILMS
Asphalt Watches (Shayne Ehman, Seth Scriver)
Enemy (Denis Villeneuve)
The F Word (Michael Dowse)
Gabrielle (Louise Archambault)
Rhymes for Young Ghouls (Jeff Barnaby)
Sarah Prefers to Run / Sarah préfère la course (Chloé Robichaud)
Tom at the Farm / Tom à la ferme (Xavier Dolan)
Vic + Flo Saw a Bear / Vic + Flo ont vu un ours (Denis Côté)
Watermark (Jennifer Baichwal, Edward Burtynsky)
When Jews Were Funny (Director: Alan Zweig)

SHORT FILMS
The Chaperone (Fraser Munden, Neil Rathbone)
The End of Pinky (Claire Blanchet)
An Extraordinary Person /Quelqu’un d’extraordinaire (Monia Chokri)
A Grand Canal (Johnny Ma)
In Guns We Trust (Nicolas Lévesque)
Noah (Walter Woodman, Patrick Cederberg)
Nous Avions (Stéphane Moukarzel)
Paradise Falls (Fantavious Fritz)
Subconscious Password (Chris Landreth)
Yellowhead (Kevan Funk)

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Acknowledgments: For their very kind assistance in making the Vancouver presentation of Canada’s Top Ten possible, The Cinematheque is grateful to Steve Gravestock, Senior Programmer; Meaghan Brander, Manager, Film Circuit; Alex Rogalski and Magali Simard, Short Cuts Canada Programmers; and Lisa Goldberg, Coordinator, Festival Programming, of the Toronto International Film Festival.

Program notes adapted from texts provided by TIFF.