TIFF picks Canada’s top ten films of 2012

Will Perkins
·Blogger

And here you thought TIFF was only busy in September! At the 12th annual Canada's Top Ten event on Tuesday, the Toronto International Film Festival announced their list of best Canadian features and short films of 2012. Hosted by Don McKellar ("Last Night," "Blindness") and Sarah Gadon ("Cosmopolis," "Antiviral"), the yearly Canada's Top Ten event is designed to celebrate and raise the profile of great Canadian films and the people who make them.

See also: 'Silver Linings Playbook' wins the People's Choice Award at TIFF 2012

This year's crop of winners -- which were selected by a panel of filmmakers and industry professionals -- represented a wide spectrum of films from many different genres and from almost every part of Canada. The top ten includes a hockey-centric comedy, a highly personal family documentary, a transgendered relationship tale, a speculative satire by a Canadian master, and more. In true Canuck fashion, the top ten films weren't ranked on a scale, but were instead presented in alphabetical order. How Canadian of TIFF!

TIFF's Canada's Top Ten picks:

"Cosmopolis" - David Cronenberg
"The End of Time" - Peter Mettler
"Goon" - Michael Dowse
"Laurence Anyways"- Xavier Dolan
"Midnight's Children" - Deepa Mehta
"My Awkward Sexual Adventure" - Sean Garrity
"Rebelle" - Kim Nguyen
"Still" - Michael McGowan
"Stories We Tell" - Sarah Polley
"The World Before Her" - Nisha Pahuja

It should be noted that while many of these films did screen at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival, not all of them did, as playing the fest was not a requirement for consideration. Noticeably absent from the list were films like Kate Miles Melville's well-liked coming of age dramedy "Picture Day" (which played at TIFF 2012 and just won the Best Canadian Feature prize at the Whistler Film Festival) and Brandon Cronenberg's surprisingly strong and very disturbing debut film "Antiviral." However, the fact that good Canadian films were left off of TIFF's top ten list speaks highly of the current state of our film industry -- there were literally too many notable Canuck films to make the cut.

See also: The Top 10 funniest moments from TIFF 2012

If you missed any of these movies at TIFF or during their theatrical runs, all the selected films will screen at TIFF's official home, the Lightbox, between Jan. 4 and 13, and will then go on a cross-country tour that will bring the movies to Vancouver's Pacific Cinematheque, Edmonton's Metro Cinema, and Montreal's PHI Centre. It's a chance to see the best of the best of Canadian film in 2012 before the movie awards season -- where a few of these movies are sure to make waves -- kicks into high gear.

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