MARCH 3-10

Established in 2001 by the Toronto International Film Festival Group, Canada’s Top Ten is an annual poll celebrating excellence in Canadian filmmaking. The year’s ten best Canadian feature-length films and ten best Canadian short films are chosen by two separate independent panels of filmmakers, festival programmers, journalists, academics and industry professionals drawn from across the country. Pacific Cinémathèque is pleased to present the panels’ distinguished selections for 2009.

Members of this year’s feature panel were Craig Adlard, V.P. World Sales, IndustryWorks Pictures; Bart Beaty, Associate Professor, Faculty of Communication and Culture, University of Calgary; Karen Black, Director, Canadian Initiatives, Toronto International Film Festival; Jerry Ciccoritti, Toronto filmmaker (Blood, Trudeau); Tom McSorley, Executive Director, Canadian Film Institute (Ottawa); Nicole Robert, founder and president, Go Films; Dr. Julietta Sichel, Program Director, Karlovy Vary International Film Festival; Jay Stone, national film critic, Canwest News Service; Ingrid Veninger, writer/producer/director of Only; and Norman Wilner, film critic, Now Magazine.

Panellists for this year’s selection of Canada’s Top Ten Shorts were Shane Belcourt, Toronto filmmaker (Tkaronto); Michèle Maheux, Executive Director and COO, Toronto International Film Festival; Adam Nayman, film critic, Eye Weekly; Shane Smith, Executive Producer, In-flight Entertainment, Spafax Canada; and Sherry White, Newfoundland and Labrador filmmaker (Crackie).

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PLEASE NOTE: Due to a conflict with its theatrical release, one of the features chosen for Canada’s Top Ten 2009, Xavier Dolan's J’ai tué ma mère (I Killed My Mother), was not available for our presentation. The film is scheduled to open March 5 at the Vancity Theatre in Vancouver.

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Acknowledgments: For their very kind assistance in making the Vancouver presentation of Canada’s Top Ten possible, Pacific Cinémathèque is grateful to Steve Gravestock, Associate Director of Canadian Programming, and Meaghan Brander, Programming Coordinator, Film Circuit, of the Toronto International Film Festival Group.