Jade Li (Oh), a vivacious Chinese Canadian, wants to become an actress without upsetting her extremely traditional parents. It’s a balancing act that Jade is finding difficult to achieve. Talking in English, wearing western clothes and going out with non-Asian guys, Jade leads a secret life when she leaves her stuffy-but-warm domestic scene each day. Things come to a head when Mark (Rennie), a white Canadian graduate student, insists on turning their casual fling into something more meaningful. It’s a relationship that Jade’s parents would hate. What should she do?

Sandra Oh won the Best Actress Genie for her performance. The film also won prizes in Vancouver, Berlin and Turin.

By day, Arthur Poppington (Harrelson) works at a construction site; by night, he is the mighty Defendor, a costumed vigilante who keeps Hamilton safe from his arch nemesis, Captain Industry.

Outfitted in a homemade costume, Defendor may not have special powers, but he is nonetheless dedicated to protecting the streets and fighting crime. He battles a corrupt cop (Koteas), befriends the tough and streetwise Kat (Dennings) and schemes to bring down a local mob boss, all while a court-appointed psychiatrist (Oh) tries to get to the bottom of his conviction that he is, in fact, a superhero.

Turning the superhero genre on its head, Defendor is a bittersweet and emotionally affecting take on our comic book–obsessed culture.

A lawyer (Holm), pursued by concerns of losing a daughter to drugs, comes to a Canadian town where 20 children have died in a school bus accident. He wants the parents to sue to make those at fault pay. Told partly in flashbacks that dramatize the days leading up to the accident, this heart-wrenching story follows the lawyer from family to family as he coaxes each to join the lawsuit.

As momentum for the case builds, he finds himself squaring off against the lone survivor of the accident (Polley), battling against the power of long-held family secrets. Based on the bestselling novel by Russell Banks, this shattering film won eight Genie Awards and garnered two Oscar nominations for Egoyan.

“Cuts to the bone and stays there long after its end credits have finished rolling.” — Michael Dequina, TheMovieReport.com

Two Indigenous women from vastly different backgrounds find their worlds colliding on an East Vancouver sidewalk when domestic violence forces one of them, a pregnant teen named Rosie (Violet Nelson), to flee her home.

Àila (Tailfeathers) swiftly offers her shelter, and as their intimate yet challenging encounter develops, the women weave a fragile bond, and must face their own unique struggles with the complexities of motherhood, class, race, and the ongoing legacy of colonialism.

Sandy (Margaret Langrick) is a bored 12-year-old preparing for another long and uneventful summer in rural 1950s British Columbia, when her older cousin, Butch (John Wildman), arrives unexpectedly from California in a shiny red convertible.

Of course, the impressionable Sandy is immediately dazzled by Butch’s cool, rock’n’roll swagger, whose appearance seems to promise all the excitement that Sandy has been longing for.

Based on writer-director Sandy Wilson’s own memories, My American Cousin won six Genie Awards including Best Picture, Best Director (Wilson), Best Original Screenplay, Best Actor (Wildman), Best Actress (Langrick), and Best Film Editing. It remains one of Canada’s best loved coming-of-age films.

“The film works a gentle spell around its viewer, and ends up leaving an unexpected lasting impression.” – Dustin Putman, The Film File

Based on Barbara Gowdy’s short story "We So Seldom Look On Love", Kissed tells the offbeat and unlikely story of Sandra (Molly Parker, who won the Genie Award for best actress for the role), a young woman whose lifelong preoccupation with death leads her to study as an embalmer at a mortuary school, where her romantic feelings about death blossom into full-blown necrophilia.
 
A fellow student (Peter Outerbridge) develops feelings for Sandra, but struggles to cope with her unusual and disturbing sexual desires. Kissed is a rare film about sexual awakening that manages to be both profoundly subversive and extremely tender.
 
“Stopkewich has managed the unlikely feat of making a film about necrophilia that is neither a black comedy nor a horror outing. Rather, she has crafted a poetic, provocative love story about sex, romance and death that is surprisingly endearing.” – Brendan Kelly, Variety
 

Meditation Park opens with Maria (Cheng Pei Pei), the matriarch of a Chinese-Canadian family, hosting a birthday celebration for her workaholic husband, Bing, (Tzi Ma), along with her similarly overworked daughter (Sandra Oh in a brilliant performance) and her own family.

Maria clearly reveres Bing and the sacrifices he has made for their family – so when she discovers another woman’s panties in his pocket, she's forced to confront the harsh reality that her world may not be what it seemed.

As Maria wrestles with what to do about her discovery, she befriends a group of local eccentrics and a grumpy neighbour (Don McKellar). Maria’s journey of self-discovery soon teaches her everyone’s lives are more complicated than she has been led to believe.

“Shum mines her favourite theme – immigrant experience in Canada – in what seems at first to be a gentle slice of life but eventually develops a powerful emotional force.” – Susan G. Cole, NOW Magazine
 
 

In 2016, scientists declared that the Earth has entered a new geological era, one that is entirely the consequence of humanity’s abuse of the planet. This documentary goes around the world illustrating the variety of ways that humanity has affected its environment.

In Kenya, authorities set fire to mounds of elephant tusks to protest the illegal ivory trade, resulting in a devastating display of the impact of poaching. In Russia and Germany, mining operations transform the land into an otherworldly wasteland. The unfathomable scale of the images created by these moments are equal parts beautiful and disturbing.

Following Manufactured Landscapes and Watermark, photographer Edward Burtynsky and filmmakers Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier conclude their award-winning trilogy with an urgent message to all the citizens of the world to see the consequences of our actions, before it’s too late.

Three Punjabi-Canadian sisters await the verdict from the trial of the cousin charged with abusing them as children. In this heavy-hitting documentary, the sisters confront the culture that allowed the abuse to happen, including parents who encouraged their silence.

Gang violence and a maelstrom of crime rock Vancouver in this flashy, dangerous thriller about the Indo-Canadian underworld. Starring Randeep Hooda and Ali Momen.