FEBRUARY 18-24

Established in 2001 by the Toronto International Film Festival Group, Canada’s Top Ten is an annual poll celebrating excellence in Canadian filmmakin

g. 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 2010.

Members of this year’s feature panel were Genie- and Gemini-nominated actress Liane Balaban (One Week, Abroad); Toronto Star movies editor and writer Linda Barnard; Montreal-born, Los Angeles-based writer-director Matt Bissonnette (Passenger Side — Canada’s Top Ten 2009); Edmonton producer, broadcaster and media executive Fil Fraser; Teri Hart, reporter for The Movie Network and Movie Entertainment magazine; film producer Peter O’Brian (The Grey Fox, My American Cousin); Toronto writer-director Kari Skogland (Fifty Dead Men Walking — Canada’s Top Ten 2008); Agata Smoluch Del Sorbo, a Canadian feature film programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival; Vancouver filmmaker Bruce Sweeney (Last Wedding, Excited); and Kim Yutani, a Programmer at the Sundance Film Festival and Director of Programming of Outfest in Los Angeles.

Panellists for this year’s selection of Canada’s Top Ten Shorts were filmmaker Deborah Chow, whose debut feature h-cost-of-living">The High Cost of Living was selected for Canada’s Top Ten 2010; Montreal film critic and 24 images editor Philippe Gajan; Toronto video artist/filmmaker John Greyson, director of the 1996 Genie winner Lilies; film and television actress Allison Mack, (Smallville); and Sudz Sutherland, director of Love, Sex and Eating the Bones (Canada’s Top Ten 2003).

Feature-Length Films

Barney’s Version (Richard J. Lewis)
Curling (Denis Côté)
Heartbeats / Les amours imaginaires (Xavier Dolan)
The High Cost of Living (Deborah Chow)
Incendies (Denis Villeneuve)
Last Train Home (Lixin Fan)
Modra (Ingrid Veninger)
Mourning for Anna / Trois temps après la mort d’Anna (Catherine Martin)
Splice (Vincenzo Natali)
Trigger (Bruce McDonald)

Short Films

Above the Knee (Greg Atkins)
Les fleurs de l'âge / Little Flowers (Vincent Biron)
I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors (Ann Marie Fleming)
The Legend of Beaver Dam (Jerome Sable)
The Little White Cloud That Cried (Guy Maddin)
Lipsett Diaries / Les journaux de Lipsett (Theodore Ushev)
Marius Borodine (Emanuel Hoss-Desmarais)
Mokhtar (Halima Ouardiri)
On the Way to the Sea / Qu da hai de lu shang (Tao Gu)
Vapor (Kaveh Nabatian)

Program subject to revision. Please bookmark this page for updated program information.

Please Note: Due to conflicts with their theatrical releases, two of the features chosen for Canada’s Top Ten 2010, Barney’s Version and Incendies, were not available for our presentation.

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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, Lisa Goldberg, Assistant, Canadian Programming, and Meaghan Brander, Programming Coordinator, Film Circuit, of the Toronto International Film Festival Group.