An urgent exploration of race relations, this documentary from acclaimed director Charles Officer follows award-winning journalist and activist Desmond Cole as he pulls back the curtain on racism in Canada, inviting all Canadians to understand the experience of being in his skin. Cole won a National Magazine Award for his impactful and incisive Toronto Life cover story about carding and racial profiling. Now, in Officer’s starkly honest doc, he journeys across North America, exploring what it’s really like to be Black in the 21st century.

“Cole’s journey is not just toward discovery, but toward the unveiling of a desperate, hidden truth: the truth about the skin he’s in. And the Canada we thought we knew.” – CBC.ca 

Max Renn (Woods) is the president of a trashy TV channel desperate for new programming to attract viewers. When he and his girlfriend (Harry) unearth a mysterious show called “Videodrome” and try to find its origins, they end up embarking on a hallucinatory journey into a shadow world of conspiracies, sadomasochism and bodily transformation.

Videodrome is one of David Cronenberg’s most original and provocative works, and is widely acclaimed as one of the most influential and mind-bending sci-fi/horror films of the 1980s. “Long live the new flesh” goes this movie’s most famous quote — and long live crazy Canadian body horror!

Set in the Haida Gwaii region in the 19th century, Edge of the Knife (SG̲aawaay Ḵ'uuna in Haida) adapts a classic Haida folk tale of a man left for dead in the forest who becomes the Gaagiid/Gaagiixiid, or “the Wildman”. After an accident where he is separated from his family, Adiits'ii (York) wanders through the forest becoming driven mad by both natural and supernatural forces. As his loved ones, including best friend Kwa (Russ), set out to capture and cure him, Adiits’ii grows increasingly feral.

The first feature film made entirely in the critically endangered Haida language - fluently spoken by fewer than 20 people - the film is a spellbinding and mythical tale of pride, tragedy and love, set against the stunning backdrop of Canada’s Pacific northwest.

Made with a Haida cast and in collaboration with the Haida Council, this compelling film proves that cinema can be at once a powerful vessel for storytelling and a profound act of Indigenous language and culture revitalization.

Joey (Bradley) and Peter (McGrath) are best friends from a small town in Nova Scotia. With their seasonal work becoming scarce, they decide to pack up their meagre belongings and head west to Toronto, where they’re convinced better luck awaits them. Finding work at a soda bottling plant, the duo try to adjust to the decidedly different pace of life in the big city.

A charming yet realistic portrait of a very Canadian experience, Goin’ Down the Road is known as one of Don Shebib’s finest films, and has landed on the Toronto International Film Festival’s Top 10 Canadian Films of All Time list for four decades in a row.

At the Exotica strip club in downtown Toronto, a grieving father (Greenwood) becomes obsessed with a young stripper (Kirshner). As the intertwined stories of the dancers and patrons unfold, it becomes clear that they share many mysterious and unspoken connections.

Dark, engaging and with a brilliant ensemble performance from its many players, Exotica is one of Egoyan’s most engaging and alluring films. A hypnotic thriller about desire, obsession and loneliness, it won eight Genie Awards.

Growing up as a depressed, overweight gay teen in Nova Scotia was hard for young William, so he ran away at the age of 15 and never looked back. That is, until ten years later when he returns for his sister’s wedding, and must face the dysfunctional family and oppressive community he thought he had left behind.

A challenging, evocative and artful drama about coming to terms with one’s past, one’s family and one’s identity. The Hanging Garden explores how the choices we make can affect the future — for us, and for those whose lives we touch.

“The heart of the movie is its insight into the way families are haunted by their own history.” — Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun-Times

Based on a true story, Joanna (Margaret Qualley), an aspiring writer, takes a job at a literary agency in New York that represents the notoriously reclusive writer J.D. Salinger, and is tasked with responding to his many fan letters. While it begins as a tedious desk job, she finds herself taken in by the letters and decides she wants to help the fans get their letters to their idol, going against the wishes of her strict manager (Sigourney Weaver).

At a lakeside retreat, lifelong friends Matthias (Gabriel D'Almeida Freitas) and Maxime (Xavier Dolan) agree to star in a student film in which they have to share a kiss. Matthias, who is in a long-term relationship with a woman, is surprised that the kiss awakens in him unexpected feelings for his friend, causing him to question his own sexuality. As his confusion starts to take over his life, Matthias must try to come to terms with his identity before he loses everything.

This latest film from acclaimed filmmaker Xavier Dolan is a touching story of self-discovery that was nominated for Seven Prix Iris and was named to TIFF's Canada’s Top 10 of the year.

Feeling stifled by the confines of her small town, Leo (Karelle Tremblay) is reluctant to celebrate her 18th birthday, which brings her closer to an adulthood she doesn’t want to confront. Tired of her family nagging her about her future, she rebels against them by striking up a friendship with Steve (Pierre-Luc Brilliant), her much older guitar teacher who still lives in his mother’s basement. She is fascinated by both his musical ability and lack of ambitions to do anything else, which stands in stark contrast from everyone else in her life.

A quiet and poignant exploration of small-town life, this third film from acclaimed Quebecois director Sébastien Pilote claimed the prize for Best Canadian Film at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival.

Jacques (Alexis Martin), a struggling actor on the run from a loan shark, reluctantly strikes a deal with Simon (Gilles Renaud), a rural farmer with a secret marijuana greenhouse, to help him cultivate a marijuana crop for harvest. In exchange, Simon will hide him from the gangster he owes money to and give him a cut of the profits so that he can pay off his debts.

When they are forced to bring in a sassy energy technician (Emmanuelle Lussier-Martinez) to help their secret grow-op thrive, both men’s secrets are threatened, and the race is on to complete the harvest before they’re discovered.

Les Mauvaises Herbes was nominated for four Canadian Screen Awards including Best Picture and won two Prix Iris for Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor.