Lights, camera, elbows up: Movies to stream on Canadian Film Day

Yahoo

14-04-2025

Finding a Canadian movie can be harder than finding pure Canadian orange juice.
Scroll through the options screening at Toronto's downtown Scotiabank cinema this weekend and you'll find no end of U.S. fare, including Snow White, A Minecraft Movie and A Working Man.
The only Canadian offerings (sort of) are Freaky Tales, starring Pedro Pascal, and Novocaine, with Jack Quaid. These co-productions have some Canadian money in them, but little in the way of Canuck talent, locations or plot.
So what's a Canadian to do? Well, the various streaming platforms offer a wealth of sometimes hidden Canadian gems. Some of those platforms are even free, or offer free trial periods so you can check out their CanCon before you subscribe.
There's also an initiative happening this month known as National Canadian Film Day. Launched in 2014, it takes place on April 16 and has always been a patriotic celebration of the nation's film industry.
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That feeling may be a little more intense than usual this year, with the organizers promising 'a massive, celebratory, elbows-up explosion of Canadian film.'
Events will take place across the country — and, through the auspices of Global Affairs Canada, around the world as well. The Canadian Film Day website even has a searchable list of screenings and events.
A search in Toronto finds a free screening of Forces of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie, at the North York Central Library; a free screening of Johnny Ma's To Live To Sing at the Cineplex Fairview; and 'Elbows Up for Canadian Culture,' a town hall event at the Scotiabank (yes, the same one showing Snow White). It features Yannick Bisson, Don McKellar, Mary Walsh and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers discussing the Canadian films that have affected them, and what Canadian culture and stories mean to us.
The website also has links to the various streaming platforms. Here is some of the Canadian gold you can find there. (Be advised that some of these movies appear on more than one streaming service.)
I Like Movies: Chandler Levack's feature debut is a love letter to movies, but also to the golden age of renting them from the likes of Blockbuster, and not the streaming option you'll be choosing.
Starbuck: Quebec filmmaker Ken Scott's crowd-pleasing 2011 comedy is about a man coming to terms with having fathered 533 children, thanks to a sperm bank's administrative error. It's so good, he remade it two years later with Vince Vaughn. But the Canadian version is better.
The Grand Seduction: Is there anything more Canadian than a comedy about health care? Don McKellar directed this 2013 film, a remake of Quebec's La Grande Séduction from 2003. Take your pick.
My Internship in Canada: Patrick Huard (from Starbuck!) plays a Quebec politician who must cast a pivotal vote when Parliament becomes deadlocked over an international crisis. Philippe Falardeau directed this 2015 comedy.
Bon Cop Bad Cop: This 2006 buddy cop comedy comes with its own unique Canadian twist, pairing an officer from Ontario with one from Quebec (they're called because a dead body was found on the border) for bilingual hilarity.
The Sweet Hereafter: Nominated for two Academy Awards, Atom Egoyan's 1997 searing drama is based on a novel that was set in New York. So of course he moved it to Ontario.
Sleeping Giant: Three teenage boys cope with boredom and coming-of-age antics on the shores of Lake Superior. Director Andrew Cividino made this 2015 feature-length version of his earlier short film.
Oscar Peterson: Black + White: Canadian documentary maestro Barry Avrich made this excellent 2021 doc about jazz icon (and fellow Montrealer) Oscar Peterson, featuring a who's who of celebrity fans of the great pianist.
Fubar: Canada's top entry in the mock-rockumentary category is this 2002 tale of two head-bangers, filmed and set in Calgary.
Strange Brew: One of the great TV comedy spinoffs is this 1983 cult hit about two hosers and a brewery. One of Max von Sydow's best roles — and yes, we know he was also in The Seventh Seal.
Turning Red: The Mouse House is not known for its Canadian content, though it did have Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis reprise their Strange Brew characters as a pair of moose in 2003's Brother Bear. But Turning Red, an animated film from Canada's Domee Shi, is a real Canadian love-in, set in Toronto's Chinatown in 2002.
Sugarcane: Nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary feature at the recent Oscars, this hard-hitting film follows the investigation into a residential school in British Columbia, and the effects that has on the lives of survivors and descendants.
One Week: When a man learns he's dying of cancer, he follows the advice of a magic Roll-Up-The-Rim cup and heads across Canada on a motorcycle. Cameos include Gord Downie of The Tragically Hip, and the Stanley Cup.
Stories We Tell: Sarah Polley delves into her own family history in this moving 2012 documentary, unpacking the lives of her parents and story of her biological father.
Scarborough: This 2021 drama, set in the sprawling Toronto suburb, is adapted from the Trillium shortlisted novel of the same name by Catherine Hernandez, and tells a story of several children in a low-income neighbourhood there.
Pontypool: Set in the (real) town of Pontypool, Ont., this 2008 horror-thriller imagines a zombie apocalypse spread not by a virus, but by language. It's wickedly smart.
Men with Brooms: Writer/director Paul Gross heads up a stellar all-Canadian cast in this 2002 romcom centred on the sport of curling. But you knew that.
Manufactured Landscapes: A 2006 film about environmental pollution that is ironically absolutely gorgeous to behold. Director Jennifer Baichwal uses the large-format photography of fellow Canadian Edward Burtynsky to examine a kilometre-long clothing iron factory in China, a shipbreaking yard in Bangladesh, and other almost impossibly vast human creations.
Project Grizzly: This National Film Board doc from 1996 follows the efforts of Troy Hurtubise, a Canadian inventor obsessed with building a bear-proof suit to let researchers get close to grizzlies without endangering their lives. It's funny but also inspiring to witness his determination.
Roadkill: This rollocking road movie from 1989 is the directing debut of Bruce McDonald, and the acting debut of Don McKellar, who also wrote the screenplay and plays an aspiring serial killer having an existential crisis.
Dawson City: Frozen Time: This 2016 documentary chronicles the bizarre story of the 1978 discovery of 533 reels of nitrate film buried beneath the permafrost in a decommissioned swimming pool. It turned out to be a treasure trove of lost footage from the era of silent movies.
WolfCop: Once described in the pages of National Post as the 'top 79 minutes of Canadian cinema,' this story of a cop who is also a wolf is a delirious fun throwback to the '80s, right down to its pitch-perfect use of Gowan's 1987 hit Moonlight Desires.
Cube: Long before Saw, Circle, The Belko Experiement, The Maze Runner or The Platform came this low-budget 1997 film from Vincenzo Natali, about a group of strangers trying to figure their way out of a mysterious maze that keeps shifting like a Rubik's Cube. Clever and clearly inspirational!
Slash/Back: It's The Thing meets Attack the Block, as extraterrestrial invaders make the mistake of landing in Pangnirtung, an Inuit hamlet of some 1,500 people, just a smidgeon below the Arctic Circle on Baffin Island in Nunavut. Aliens vs. 14-year-old girls: Guess who wins?
Tu Dors Nicole: Stéphane Lafleur's nostalgic comedy might take place in the 1980s (there's a dot-matrix printer) or the year it came out (2014); either way, it tells a lovely, touching story of 22-year-old Nicole bouncing around in her parents' suburban Montreal house one summer while they're away.
Backcountry: Adam MacDonald's 2015 thriller never lets up, as a couple goes camping and everything that can go wrong eventually does. MacDonald patiently, perfectly breadcrumbs out hints and ill omens as Alex and Jenn slowly get deeper into the woods, and trouble.
Black Christmas: It might be taking it too far to say that Canada invented the slasher genre, but this 1974 movie predates many of its better-known siblings, and features such Canadian icons as Margot Kidder, Lynne Griffin and dual citizen Andrea Martin.
Blood Quantum: Jeff Barnaby's 2019 horror is a clever First Nations twist on the classic zombie genre, set on a reserve where the Indigenous inhabitants are immune to the disease, but must contend with white refugees looking for help.