I GREW UP IN THE 1990s, in a small country on the Adriatic coast. At that time, freshly out of communism, Albania had a population of just over three million and was lauded as the poorest country in Europe. A lot of things had happened under the communist regime (which are – to say the least – out of scope here), one of which was the development of the Albanian film industry. The forty-five-year regime saw the production of 286 films.[i] A lot of these films are quite good, and some were even critically acclaimed outside the country. All of them have a communist undertone. The fall of the regime was followed by a bitter anger against what came before, and mass destruction of communist infrastructures. But these films – these undeniably communist films – remained untouched. Today, when I go to visit, I often come across them when flipping channels. Famous lines from these features have found a permanent place in everyday speech, in books, in TV shows. There is no need for explanation – everyone knows the lines, everyone knows the movies. They are classics.

What are Canada’s classic films? Canada – an infinitely bigger and wealthier country, with no past regime that it has tried to forget. I sure have to think hard about it. How many times have I seen It’s a Wonderful Life and Mrs. Doubtfire and The Sixth Sense? Yet when I think of Canadian films, the first ones that come to mind are those made-for-TV holiday specials that make you want to gouge your eyes out.

In this article, we will explore the history of the Canadian feature film industry, with a focus on full-length fictional features. Collusion, revolution, nudity – we’ve got it all. The objective is to answer the question: why doesn’t Canada have “classics” – films that the majority of the population is aware and fond of? Alright – action!

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AFTER WORLD WAR I, much poorer and burdened with debt to the United States, the allied countries found their film industries suffering. Meanwhile, Hollywood was only growing, and the introduction of sound films in 1927 marked the beginning of its Golden Age. The shift in economic power from Europe to the U.S. allowed Hollywood to flood the European film market.

Seeing its national film industry dwindling, the UK passed the Cinematograph Films Act in 1927, with the purpose of supporting British film production against the overwhelming wave of Hollywood. The act initially required that 7.5% of films screened in domestic cinemas be British-made. This quota was raised to 20% in 1935. And “British” in this case included films from British dominions such as Canada and Australia.[vi]

France followed suit in 1928, requiring that one in every seven films screened be French, and then raising it to one in every three films in 1929. Even Australia introduced its own separate quota in 1935.[vii] And Canada did … nothing.

Films that met the criteria for the British quota would be distributed and screened across the British Empire – the largest film market in the world after the United States. Hollywood saw an opportunity: it could get around the quota and turn a profit, by using Canada as a setting for a series of cheap B films. In the ten years that followed, twenty-two such films were produced, which were dubbed “quota quickies.” [viii] 

Historian George Melnyk said of the quota quickies:

“They played their own historical role in marking Canada’s transition from its British colonial past to its new imperial master, the United States.”[ix]

Historian Peter Morris summed it up as follows:

“[These films] contributed absolutely nothing to the creation of a domestic film identity and the effort to make them sapped the drive of those Canadians who might have been able to take advantage of the positive possibilities the British quota law offered to Canadian production.”[x]

In 1938 the UK modified the quota, making commonwealth films ineligible.[xi]

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The National Film Board and Cinéma Direct (1939-1964)

WE NOW ENTER WHAT is arguably the most influential era in determining what Canadian film would become – the era of the National Film Board (NFB). 

In 1938, the Canadian government invited Scottish filmmaker John Grierson to prepare a report on the state of filmmaking in the country. At the time Grierson was employed by the Empire Marketing Board in England, a company whose mandate was, as Melnyk put it, “the projection of England in a positive way to the colonies and dominions … in short, its mandate was propaganda.”[xii] 

There were a few things that Grierson was passionate about, and film as a tool for propaganda just happened to be one of them. He was also passionate about his distaste for the fake escapism of Hollywood’s feature films, although he greatly admired their style. And he was passionate about filming the reality of the working class – passionate, in other words, about documentaries. No big surprise there – after all he himself had coined the term “documentary.” As we will see, Grierson was able to bring all these passions together upon his relocation to Canada. 

Grierson’s report on the Canadian film industry called for a federal agency which would unite the country and project Canada to the world. The National Film Act was passed in 1939, and the National Film Board was born a few months later, with Grierson at the head. 

In his six-year reign over the NFB, the organization grew from a staff of about a dozen to almost 800, and made 500 short films, becoming one of the largest film studios in the world, almost overnight. This was no small feat for a country that had had almost no film industry to speak of.

With the start of the war in 1939, Grierson had the opportunity to put all his passions into play. He set the tone for what the NFB would become, producing documentaries about real people, of a superior Hollywood-like quality, and – at least during WWII – with a war propaganda angle. One of these shorts, Churchill’s Island, was awarded an Oscar in 1941 – a first for Canadian film, and one of the many thousands of awards the NFB would go on to win.[xiii]

Although Grierson left the NFB in 1945, his strong mandate of high-quality documentaries lived on for decades to come, making Canada known around the world as the country of the documentary. In fact, the Canadian government went all in on the NFB and its documentary, at the expense of feature films.

In 1948, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) proposed what became known as the Canadian Cooperation Project. In exchange for Canada not putting any sort of restriction on the exhibition of American films, nor pursuing the development of a feature film industry, the MPAA would “film some of their features on location in Canada … favourable references to Canada would be inserted in Hollywood scripts in order to promote tourism and … the theatrical distribution of NFB short films in the United States would be encouraged.” Wow, what a great trade-off – sign me up! This gem of an agreement would last until 1958, stunting any attempts to create a national feature film industry … in English Canada anyway.[xiv]

Historians are torn on Grierson’s legacy. Grierson believed that Canada had no chance of competing with Hollywood. He chose to focus on a niche, and anyway the documentary was a more worthwhile pursuit. On the one hand you could say that by pigeon-holing Canada into the documentary and blocking any avenues for feature film production (at the time the NFB did not fund any feature films), he stunted any potential for a feature film industry. On the other hand, the NFB was one of the biggest film studios in the world, and its existence created a community of professional Canadian cinematographers, paving the way for what was to come.[xv]

What’s more, the NFB was the first to give a voice to women and minority filmmakers. In 1974, the NFB created Studio D – “the world’s first publicly funded feminist filmmaking studio.” It was run entirely by women with the objective of making documentaries for and about women. The unit produced controversial documentaries on topics such as lesbian relationships, pornography, and abortion. In its twenty-two-year history it created 140 films and won the NFB three of its eleven Oscars.[xvi]

In 1975, husband-and-wife team Claire Prieto and Roger McTair produced the NFB short documentary Some Black Women – the first film about the black community in Canada produced by a black Canadian filmmaker.[xvii] Claire went on to have a successful career in film and TV, and in 1988 founded the Black Film and Video Network “to encourage and promote the development, production and distribution of the work of black film and video-makers in Canada.”[xviii]

The NFB was also a pioneer in animated films. Today, its animated shorts have received thirty-eight Oscar nominations, “making it the third most nominated entity in that category after Disney and MGM.”[xix]

So, it’s hard to say for sure whether the NFB’s legacy on feature films was positive or negative. But for this treasure trove of films on the NFB website, I am grateful.

But back to our story. While English Canada had signed its soul away to Hollywood, French Canada, through private entrepreneurship, had quietly produced about twenty feature films. And there was a common theme to them.

“The material itself was rooted, for the most part, in identifiable Quebec subject matter and based, in part, in Quebec literature. Nothing like this was happening in English Canada. There were no independent Anglo-Canadian feature film producers at that time. Everyone in English Canada looked to government and the National Film Board for ‘national’ cinematic expression.”[xx]

Quebec’s head start in feature film production, combined with Canada’s documentary legacy, paved the way for the first real chapter in Canadian feature film history – cinéma direct.

Ever since the British conquest of French Canada in the 1760s, Quebec’s anglophone minority had held all high-ranking positions in business and government. The anglophone-courting, ultra-conservative, ultra-Catholic Union nationale party, led by Maurice Duplessis, controlled Quebec from 1944 until Duplessis’s death in 1959. In 1960, the Liberal party won the provincial election, and the Quiet Revolution, which had already been brewing, began in earnest. It stood against everything that had come before. In this spirit of national awakening, Quebec pushed the NFB to produce more French-language films, which led to the creation of a unit dedicated to French-language production.[xxi]

The first film considered to be in the cinéma direct style was – of course – a documentary. Les Raquetteurs, produced by the NFB in 1958, and co-directed by Michel Brault and Gilles Groulx, covered a snowshoers’ convention in Sherbrooke.

So, what exactly is cinéma direct?

Following the invention of lightweight, hand-held cameras and synchronous sound in the 1950s, Quebec filmmakers were able to do away with the sound recording equipment, crews, sets, lighting, and tripods of traditional filmmaking, and create films that could capture reality directly, out in the real world. The style is characterized by one or two handheld cameras, unscripted or loosely scripted dialogue, and real-world settings with real-world people in the background. Common among these films is the idea of the director as “auteur” – fulfilling both writer and director roles, and exercising over the production a level of creative control akin to the author of a book. This was yet another divergence from traditional filmmaking.[xxii]

The primary cinéma direct fictional features of the era were produced by the NFB. Yes, even the NFB let loose a little in the sixties and started funding fictional films. For the most part, they had a common theme – Quebec identity, isolation, and revolution against the conservative, Catholic, and anglophone status quo. Le Chat dans le sac (The Cat in the Bag), a 1964 film by Gilles Groulx filmed primarily in Montreal, captures this environment. Speaking directly to the camera, the demoralized protagonist says: “I’m French Canadian, so I’m trying to find myself” and “Ultimately I am looking for a way out.”

To go through all the standout Quebecois directors and films of this era would require an article of its own (better yet, a book of its own). Suffice it to say that Quebec had found its cinematic voice.

Among those inspired by the cinéma direct coming out of French Canada was Ontario director Don Owen. His second feature, and the NFB’s second English fictional feature, Nobody Waved Goodbye (1964), was arguably the best movie English Canada had yet produced. Filmed on location in Toronto, it follows a seventeen-year-old boy with a rebellious streak. “I really don’t know where I want to go or what I want to do, but I can tell you without a minute’s hesitation what I don’t want to do. I don’t want to get into the kind of rut that my parents are in,” he says.

There was no script for the film – the scenes were improvised based on a short outline that Owen would share before shooting. The film’s locations, such as the subway and the islands, will be recognizable to today’s Torontonians.

Nobody Waved was generally disregarded in Canada, until New York made a fuss about it. The New Yorker called it an “almost unbearably just depiction of the falls of family life” and said that “not a word of the dialogue sounds invented and in nearly every scene one would swear that the camera … [was] unbeknownst to the actors.”[xxiii]

Oh, and before we wrap up this section, a note of interest to any cinephiles in the audience. If you are familiar with the work of French director Jean-Luc Godard, one of the most famous directors to have ever lived, you may have had a bit of déjà-vu while reading about cinéma direct. Sounds awfully similar to the cinéma vérité of the French New Wave, doesn’t it?

In 1963, French filmmaker Jean Rouch, one of the founders of cinéma vérité in France, and about whom Godard said “is there a better definition for a filmmaker?” had this to say about the parallels:

“It must be said, all that we have done in France in the area of cinéma vérité comes from the National Film Board [of Canada]. It is Brault who brought a new technique of filming that we had not known and that we copied ever since. In fact, truly, there is a ‘brauchitis’ spreading, it is certain. Even the people who consider that Brault is a nuisance, or were jealous, are forced to recognize it.”[xxiv]

You can read more of this interview with Rouch in our Time Capsule section at the end of this issue.

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Money! The CFDC and Tax Shelter Boom (1967-1981)

THE LATE 1960s AND 70s saw money injected into the Canadian film industry – more money than it had ever seen. The funds came from two sources: 1) the government, and 2) rich investors, via what is now known as the “tax shelter boom.”

In 1967, the federal government passed Bill C-204, for the creation of the Canadian Film Development Corporation (CFDC), “to foster and promote the development of a feature film industry in Canada,” by offering grants and loans to filmmakers. Before that year, the only organizations making feature films were the NFB (reluctantly) and a couple of independent producers. For the first time, there would be a government agency dedicated to the promotion of a domestic film industry.[xxv]

While the creation of the CFDC was a promising step, it had its shortcomings. For one, the agency could only fund a small portion of any film – its total budget was only ten million dollars. More importantly, all it could do was fund the film’s creation. Where that movie went afterwards – in a Canada which was still dominated by Hollywood, and whose theatres had no requirement to maintain any sort of Canadian film quota – was not the CFDC’s problem. As Melnyk put it:

“What happened to the product in the marketplace was more of a hope and a prayer than a legislated reality.”[xxvi]

The result? By the end of 1971 the CFDC has used its funds to contribute to the creation of sixty-four films! Only three of them made money. A major reason for this was the distribution difficulty. Another reason was the fact that English Canada had not had a real feature film industry since the era of the Shipmans. It required a ready talent and a curious audience, neither of which could spontaneously appear. [xxvii] 

“I was stunned. Shocked. Exhilarated … This movie, which was a very sweet film, had my friends in it as actors. And it was in Toronto, at the University, and there were scenes and places that I walked past every day. It was thrilling.”[xxxi]

Cronenberg was an anomaly in the English Canadian scene in many ways. For one, he was considered the originator of a new genre – body horror. For another, unlike what was to come with the tax shelter movies, Cronenberg’s films were very explicitly Canadian in their settings. Shivers, which is set in Montreal, was his third feature, and the second to be funded by the CFDC. Like most of his films, it was extremely controversial, with critics split on whether it was genius or disgusting. Regardless, the movie cemented his reputation. Robert Fulford from Saturday Night magazine, said of the movie: “If using public money to produce films like this is the only way that English Canada can have a film industry, then perhaps English Canada should not have a film industry.” In spite of these protestations, Shivers made a profit for the CFDC. It played in thirty-three countries in fourteen languages and grossed $3 million dollars.[xxxii]

Other successful films from this era include two adaptations from Canadian literature. The screenplay for The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974) was written by Mordecai Richler himself, and the film was directed by Richler’s old roommate Ted Kotcheff, who had in fact been the very first person to read the manuscript for the novel back in the fifties.[xxxiii] Outrageous! (1977), based on a short story by Canadian writer Margaret Gibson, is a semi-autobiographical account of her time living with the film’s lead, Craig Russell, who plays a gay Toronto drag queen. As far as setting goes, this is the most Toronto film yet. Both movies resonated with the Jewish and gay communities of New York[xxxiv] (that is, respectively). In fact, the following year, Woody Allen would put a direct reference to Duddy in his feature Love and Death.

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THE CFDC and Goin’ Down the Road kicked off the 1970s, a decade during which Canada would produce 708 feature films – that’s almost double what had been produced in the previous fifty years combined.[xxxv] But it wasn’t just the CFDC that made these productions possible. In 1975, the federal government introduced a new tax incentive granting investors the ability to write off 100% of their investment in a film against their personal income tax. With the success of the aforementioned CFDC films, there was a feeling in the air that the Canadian film industry might be on the verge of its big break, and so investors jumped at the opportunity. Thus commenced the tax shelter boom era.

The new tax incentive was riddled with loopholes. For example, investors could write off the total cost of the film rather than their actual investment. These loopholes drew in high-income professionals who looked to film production as a means of saving on taxes. The boom lasted until 1981, when the government sheepishly cut the write-off in half. The verdict on the films that came out of this era is … mixed.[xxxvi]

Investors knew the limitations of the Canadian market, and so the majority of the films made (only about half of which were ever released) were directed at the American market. As Peter Morris and Andrew McIntosh put it:

“Most of the films made were thus designed solely as commercial projects, and usually involved Canadian cities masquerading as American cities or generic stories set in anonymous locales. Leading roles were usually played by second-rate American stars, while Canadian talent in both cast and crew tended to be used in subordinate positions.”[xxxvii]

Film critic Martin Knelman called it “a national scandal.”[xxxviii]

But this chapter wasn’t all negatives. The huge surge in film production provided valuable education to Canadian filmmakers. The ready talent that was so lacking at the launch of the CFDC, was now here and growing.

And of course, a few noteworthy movies emerged from the garbage. For example, the 1979 comedy Meatballs, starring Bill Murray in his first film role, was hugely successful, grossing $40 million that year. The film’s Canadian director, Ivan Reitman, relocated to Hollywood, where he would go on to make more hits, including Ghostbusters and Space Jam.[xxxix]

Despite the small budget of the CFDC, and the (primarily) questionable films that came out of the Tax Shelter Boom, this period gave English Canada the experience it needed to hobble out of the past and start to find its own cinematic voice. And maybe one day, it could catch up to Quebec.

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Quebec Post-Referendum and the Toronto New Wave (1983-1999)

THERE WAS SOMETHING IN THE AIR IN 1980s French Canada. The Quiet Revolution films of the sixties had focused on, for the most part, Quebecois issues. They had been political, created by the revolution, for the revolution. But in 1980, when sixty percent of the province voted non to the question of whether Quebec should secede from Canada, something shifted. As captured by director Denys Arcand in his 1980 documentary Le Confort et l’indifférence, “‘comfort and indifference’ became the order of day; the French-Canadian ethos had shifted from a devotion to the pursuit of a collective dream to a focus on individual pleasures.”[xl]

In English Canada, something was in the air too – although for decidedly different reasons.

A group of young filmmakers who were graduating from Toronto film schools looked over at Quebec’s film industry to the east and the U.S. film industry to the south. And they wondered: why doesn’t English Canada have anything like that?

In 1985, one of these young filmmakers, Bruce McDonald, wrote a public letter to Canadian director Norman Jewison, titled “Dear Norman, What Is to Be Done?” (Norman Jewison, like many English Canadian directors, had relocated to the U.S. after a successful run at the CBC.) In the letter, McDonald described a new wave of filmmakers, and the challenges they were facing. He talked about the lack of distribution, the limited funding, and English Canada’s identity crisis (“a cultural identity as nebulous and elusive as the American Goliath is overwhelming”). As Melnyk put it:

“McDonald cast his new generation as the heroic David, who would work in Canada on Canadian subjects and not sell out to the Hollywood philistines, represented by Jewison.”[xliv]

Thus was born the Toronto New Wave. Historian Wyndham Wise describes the movement as follows:

“Rather than an expression of a particular group aesthetic, ‘Toronto New Wave’ is a catchy phrase for a spirited generation of English-Canadian filmmakers who emerged in Toronto in the eighties. … [They] came bursting on to the Canadian movie scene with fresh, original films that rejected not only Hollywood’s formulaic dramas, but also the legacy of earlier English-Canadian cinéastes (such as Don Shebib and Don Owen) who had made downbeat films about heartbreak and loss.”[xlv]

And true to their word, these filmmakers stayed in Canada. Up to that point, successful English Canadian directors had, for the most part, left the country after their first breakthrough (Ivan Reitman left after the success of Meatballs, Tedd Kotcheff leftafter the success of Duddy Kravitz), or regretted not doing so (Goin’ Down the Road director Don Shebib bitterly remarked, years afterwards, that he “should have gone to California”[xlvii]). But the New Wavers had no interest in that.

“Unlike previous generations, this group of filmmakers avoided the easy lure of big money and bigger films in Hollywood. Instead, like their cinematic mentor David Cronenberg, they chose to stay and make a living in Canada, thus contributing greatly to the ongoing development of an indigenous film culture.”[xlviii]

Luckily, this trend was not a fluke.

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The New Millenium (2000-2025)

THE NEW MILLENIUM STARTED with a success story. At the 2001 Cannes festival, a Canadian film won the Caméra d’Or for best first feature – another first for Canada.  This movie was in neither English nor French – it was in Inuktitut. Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner is the retelling of a passed-down Inuit legend. Filmed in Igloolik, Nunavut, it is the first-ever feature film in the Inuktitut language, and the first to be directed, scripted and acted entirely by Inuit.

When the CFDC (which had since been renamed Telefilm) offered only $100,000 in funding, Director Zacharias Kunuk went to the NFB, convincing them that – although technically fiction – the film had a documentary-like educational quality. This was a full-circle moment, because the world of indigenous filmmaking in Canada had begun in the 1970s with NFB documentary filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin.[xlix]

Success stories notwithstanding, Canadian films accounted for only 1.6% of the domestic box office in 2001. Telefilm, recognizing that its films were not making money, set a goal to capture 5% of the domestic box office in five years.[2] To achieve this, they drastically changed their funding model. Termed the “performance envelope” strategy, Telefilm would give half of its film fund to a handful of distributors with a proven track record. It would also require that the distributors give these titles significant theatrical rollout. This meant that both Telefilm and the distributors would have to think hard about the movies they would select in order to ensure commercial success.[l]

At its core, it was a reasonable strategy – make films that people actually want to see. But, as we’ve seen with many of the federal government’s ideas for the film industry, this method had its drawbacks.

What Telefilm was probably envisioning with this strategy was a success story like that of Sarah Polley’s first feature, Away from Her (2006). But before we delve into this feature, some Sarah Polley lore is in order.

Polley had started out as a child actor, primarily known for starring in the TV show Road to Avonlea. When the series was picked up by the Disney Channel, Polley rebelled against its “Americanization,” and demanded to be written out of the show (and yes, she was the main character). Disney complied and, financially independent, Polley left home, dropped out of high school, and moved in with her boyfriend at the age of fifteen, becoming a political activist. In 1995, she was famously struck by a riot police officer at Queen’s Park in Toronto, losing two teeth.

Amidst all this, she continued her acting career before turning to directing. She released her first short film in 1999, and her second – and one of her most famous – I Shout Love, in 2001. Both were critically acclaimed. These works exhibited Polley’s unique voice and the themes which would run through all her future works, namely, women’s lives and women’s perspectives.

So, when she began work on her first full-length feature in 2006, Away from Her, based on a short story by Alice Munro, she was exactly what Telefilm and the distributors were looking for. An established name in Canadian film with a promising track record. The film was a commercial success and it won her Best Director at the Canadian Screen Awards.[li]

Of course, at the same time, Telefilm was funding films like Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004), which, aside from its filming location, has nothing Canadian about it (is this starting to sound familiar?). Without a doubt, movies like this were a successful investment for Telefilm. But this did raise questions about Telefilm’s purpose – was it there to promote the Canadian film industry, or was it a purely commercial enterprise? What’s more, by focusing on money-making films and big distributors, what hope was there for new filmmakers?

As Toronto director Matt Johnson put it in 2015:

“You have a dozen filmmakers who, no matter what, are going to get funded by Telefilm and, no matter what, are going to have their world premiere at the biggest festival in the world. You have a groove so deep-set for these filmmakers. … They don’t struggle. They just have to show up. … A lot of people just need to die of old age for the system to change.”[lii]

This lack of support for new filmmakers resulted in the birth of two new movements. In French Canada, the Quebec renouveau, and in English Canada, the Toronto DIYers.

The renouveau is said to have begun with film critic Denis Côté. Côté initially started in radio, where “his caustic tone quickly set him apart,” before moving to Ici Montreal magazine, where his “excellent knowledge of cinema made him one of the most prominent critics of his generation.” Not one to hold back his feelings, his heavy criticism of Nouvelle-France (2004), a co-production between France and Quebec starring Gérard Depardieu, got him banned from press screenings by one of Montreal’s prominent distributors. So, the critic’s path being blocked off, he switched to filmmaking.

He was not starting from nothing – he had several short films under his belt, but he certainly wasn’t anywhere near successful enough to meet Telefilm’s criteria. So, Côté self-funded his first feature, shooting it with a small digital camera and primarily non-professional actors. Les États nordiques (Drifting States) was released in 2005. It won the prestigious Golden Leopard award at the Locarno International Film Festival, marking the beginning of the renouveau movement.[liii]

Another renouveau auteur of mythical stature is Xavier Dolan, who started out as a child actor and voice actor, notable for dubbing the voice of Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter series. At the age of sixteen, he started writing the partly-autobiographical screenplay for what would become his debut film, J’ai tué ma mère (I Killed My Mother) (and no, he did not). By the age of nineteen, he had directed, produced, and starred in the film, which was released in 2009. It was no surprise that Telefilm had declined to fund it – a decision which they no doubt regretted. At Cannes that year, the film received three awards and a standing ovation. In the years between 2009 and 2016, Dolan would release his first six feature films, five of which premiered and won awards at Cannes.[liv]

Around the same time in English Canada, the Toronto DIY movement began, largely spearheaded by Matt Johnson. In 2007, Johnson and co-creator Jay McCarrol launched their web series Nirvana the Band the Show. It was filmed in a mockumentary style with improvised dialogue, it was self-funded, and, aside from Matt and Jay and the occasional guest star (Ronnie Hawkins comes jarringly to mind), the only other actors were the unwitting citizens of Toronto. Johnson’s first full-length feature, The Dirties, released in 2013, was filmed in a very similar style. Taking place in a real high school with real high schoolers going about their day, it’s a mockumentary comedy-turned-drama where the dialogue is improvised (aside from the last line). It was produced out of pocket on a $10,000 budget.[lv]

Like the New Wavers that came before, the DIYers have no interest in Hollywood. Or, as the executive producer to Johnson’s films, Matt Miller, put it:

“We’re going to stay here, we love it here, we’re going to raise our families here. It’s the greatest city in the world, and we want people to see that.”[lvi]

By the time Johnson had released Blackberry (2023), his funding troubles were behind him. He was on the other side now – one of those people that “just have to show up” in order to receive Telefilm funding. But his words had not fallen on deaf ears. Film producer Niv Fichman, who had a history of working with first-time filmmakers, challenged Johnson and Miller to come up with a proposal for a better funding model to present to Carolle Brabant, executive director of Telefilm. The Matts, prepared to negotiate, proposed numbers they never thought Telefilm would accept – dedicated funding for first-time filmmakers, for fifty films per year at about $120,000 per film. But Telefilm accepted the proposal, and the Talent to Watch program (a significantly expanded version of the microbudget production program) was announced in November 2017.[lvii]

A very contemporary example of the success of this program is that of director Chandler Levack. She received funding from Talent to Watch towards her first feature, I Like Movies (2022). Produced on a $130,000 budget, the film was a hit, and, based on its success, Levack was able to secure funding for her $4 million second feature, Mile End Kicks, which was theatrically released in April 2026.[lviii]

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Today (and Tomorrow)

107 YEARS AFTER Nell Shipman’s hit film, and sixty-eight years after Quebec’s cinéma direct changed the course of film history, here we are today in 2026. Now, we can take a stab at answering that initial question – why doesn’t Canada have classics? It’s certainly not for lack of classics-worthy films – during the research for this piece I watched dozens of exceptional movies.

Before we dive in, I think we can all agree that French Canada doesn’t deserve to be lumped in with English Canada’s sorry lot. If we’ve learned anything, it’s that Quebec’s film industry has been thriving for the last seventy years, classics and all. So, to rephrase – why doesn’t English Canada have classics? A few themes come to mind.

 First – we got a late start. From the beginning, government policies have played whack-a-mole with the emerging Canadian film industry. In the 1920s and 30s we helped Hollywood take advantage of the British quota instead of using it as a leg up for our own industry. In the 1940s and 50s, with the Canadian Cooperation Project, we promised Hollywood we would not pursue a domestic film industry. In the 1970s, with the Tax Shelter Boom, the loophole-heavy tax credit system for film investment resulted in the production of hundreds of Canadian movies masquerading as American ones. Again and again, Canada treated its proximity to Hollywood as an excuse to raise the white flag as far as a film industry was concerned.

Second – what happens to Canadian films after production is an afterthought (if that). When the CFDC was created in the 1960s, it provisioned no funds to the marketing or distribution of a film. Today, Telefilm does offer an advance for marketing, but it is a miniscule one which has to start being paid back as soon as the film makes a dollar (not before it breaks even). In an article from this very year, Barry Hertz of The Globe and Mail said: “As it stands, the Canadian film industry – which is largely fuelled by public money from Telefilm – tends to treat the distribution and promotion of a movie as an afterthought.” He added that “if Canada is serious about supporting its filmmakers and ensuring that audiences actually get the chance to see their movies” then it can’t just be “punting a movie out into the world and hoping that it won’t fall into the void.” [lix]

Third – Canadians don’t like Canadian movies until Americans say so … allegedly. In a fascinating op-ed for The New York Times, Mordecai Richler observed that:

“Don Shebib’s film [Goin’ Down the Road] was lavishly praised in Canada, but did not win adequate distribution, until New York reviewers stood up to clap hands. Making it real.”[lx]

In Outrageous! (1977), Robin’s friends push him to take his act to the U.S. because “no Canadian act makes it here without the U.S. seal of approval.”

This is a common refrain and has been for a long time – Canadians don’t like Canadian things until Americans do. While there is likely some truth to it, I’m not sure it’s as simple as that. Allow me an anecdote.

Last summer I was at an indie bookstore in the west end, dropping off a fresh batch of our Issue 6. While doing a cursory browse, I came across a book I had been seeing pop up on Instagram – it had been nominated for a Toronto Book Award. Intrigued by its nomination and the praise on the back cover, I decided to take it home. It was – without a doubt – one of the worst books I’ve ever read. I felt – dramatically – betrayed by the Toronto Book Awards, and kind of embarrassed on Toronto’s behalf. Is this really the cream of the crop? Or is there just not enough to choose from? Either way, the nomination lost all credibility in my mind.

In the 1950s, Saturday Night magazine’s Robert Fulford, writing about Canada’s oldest publishing house at the time, Ryerson Press, said that they were famous for “dozens of nondescript books sitting up in the warehouse after being published for no better reason than someone at Ryerson thought there was something virtuous in the mere idea of issuing Canadian novels.”[lxi]

On my second of three viewings of Nirvanna at Scotiabank (yes, yes, it’s a problem), Matt Johnson made an impromptu appearance for a Q&A. After a series of questions and answers about the technicalities of making the film, the last question went to a man standing near the front. He said (paraphrased): “Aside from that quack at Hollywood Reporter, it looks like the movie is a huge success – reviews are great, everyone loves it. You guys have been so busy running around and promoting it. Have you had a chance to sit back and pause and wonder if what you’ve made here is – maybe – a classic?”

Only time will tell.

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• [1] Winter Kept Us Warm was English Canada’s first film shown at Cannes, and its first queer film, released at a time when same-sex activity was still illegal.
• [2] Telefilm did meet that target, reaching 5.2% of the Canadian box office in 2005. But this success was due almost entirely to Quebec. Quebec films had a 25.6% share of the Quebec market, while English-language films had 1.1% of the national market.

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• [i] Bruce Williams, Albanian Cinema through the Fall of Communism: Silver Screens and Red Flags (Taylor & Francis, 2025).
• [ii] “The Kinetoscope,” Library of Congress, accessed April 2026, https://www.loc.gov/static/collections/edison-company-motion-pictures-and-sound-recordings/articles-and-essays/history-of-edison-motion-pictures/origins-of-motion-pictures.html.
• [iii] “Movie camera: Mass market,” Wikipedia, last modified 16 April 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movie_camera#Mass-market.
• [iv] Kay Armatage, Peter Morris, “Back to God’s Country,” Canadian Film Encyclopedia, accessed April 2026, https://cfe.tiff.net/canadianfilmencyclopedia/content/films/back-to-gods-country.
• [v] Peter Morris, Embattled Shadows: A History of Canadian Cinema, 1895-1939 (McGill Queen’s University Press, 1992), 107.
• [vi] “Cinematograph Films Act 1927,” Wikipedia, last modified 8 May 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinematograph_Films_Act_1927.
• [vii] David Fisher, “Quotas and levies,” Terra Media, last modified 16 January 2009, https://www.terramedia.co.uk/media/film/quotas_and_levies.htm.
• [viii] George Melnyk, One Hundred Years of Canadian Cinema (University of Toronto Press, 2004), 48-49.
• [ix] Ibid., 51.
• [x] Morris, Embattled Shadows, 194.
• [xi] Melnyk, One Hundred Years, 50.
• [xii] Ibid., 59-60.
• [xiii] “Key Moments in NFB History,” Government of Canada, last modified 20 January 2026, https://www.canada.ca/en/national-film-board/corporate/archives-and-history/history.html.
• [xiv] Peter Morris, “Canadian Cooperation Project (1948–1958),” Canadian Film Encyclopedia, accessed April 2026, https://cfe.tiff.net/canadianfilmencyclopedia/Browse/bysubject/canadian-cooperation-project-19481958.
• [xv] Melnyk, One Hundred Years, 58-77.
• [xvi] “Studio D,” Wikipedia, last modified 31 March 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_D.
• [xvii] Camilo Martín-Flórez, “Celebrating BHM with a Look Back at Three Pioneering Filmmakers | Curator’s Perspective,” NFB Blog, last modified January 25, 2024, https://blog.nfb.ca/blog/2024/01/25/celebrating-bhm-with-a-look-back-at-three-pioneering-filmmakers-curators-perspective.
• [xviii] Amanda Parris, “An oral history of the Black Film and Video Network,” CBC, 8 May 2020, https://www.cbc.ca/arts/an-oral-history-of-the-black-film-and-video-network-1.5559797.
• [xix] Jamie Lang, “Preserving the Past and Powering the Future of Canadian Animation: Inside the NFB and Telefilm’s Industry-Leading Support Strategies,” Variety, 8 June 2025, https://variety.com/2025/film/global/nfb-telefilm-support-strategies-annecy-1236422288.
• [xx] Melnyk, One Hundred Years, 89.
• [xxi] “Key Moments in NFB History.”
• [xxii] Melnyk, One Hundred Years, 125-145.
• [xxiii] Ibid., 101.
• [xxiv] Eric Rohmer and Louis Marcorelles, “Entretien avec Jean Rouch,” Cahiers du Cinéma 144 (1963): 17.
• [xxv] Melnyk, One Hundred Years, 106.
• [xxvi] Ibid., 107.
• [xxvii] Ibid., 108.
• [xxviii] Peter Schjeldahl, “One Very Much for the ‘Road’,” New York Times, 8 November 1970, https://www.nytimes.com/1970/11/08/archives/one-very-much-for-the-road-one-for-the-road.html.
• [xxix] Melnyk, One Hundred Years, 109.
• [xxx] “Les Ordres,” Canadian Film Encyclopedia, accessed April 2026, https://cfe.tiff.net/canadianfilmencyclopedia/content/films/les-ordres.
• [xxxi] David L. Pike, Canadian Cinema Since the 1980s (University of Toronto Press, 2012), 53.
• [xxxii] “Shivers,” Canadian Film Encyclopaedia, accessed April 2026, ttps://cfe.tiff.net/canadianfilmencyclopedia/content/films/shivers.
• [xxxiii] Melnyk, One Hundred Years, 119
• [xxxiv] Ibid., 120.
• [xxxv] Ibid., 113.
• [xxxvi] Ibid., 114.
• [xxxvii] Andrew McIntosh, Peter Morris, “Capital Cost Allowance/The Tax Shelter Years: 1975 to 1982,” Canadian Film Encyclopedia, https://cfe.tiff.net/canadianfilmencyclopedia/Browse/bysubject/capital-cost-allowancethe-tax-shelter-years-1975-to-1982.
• [xxxviii] Melnyk, One Hundred Years, 114.
• [xxxix] Ibid., 115.
• [xl] André Loiselle, Denys Arcand’s Le déclin de l’empire américain and Les invasions barbares (University of Toronto Press, 2008), 17.
• [xli] Gary Evans, In the National Interest: A Chronicle of the National Film Board of Canada from 1949 to 1989 (University of Toronto Press, 1991), 180.
• [xlii] “On est au coton,” Canadian Film Encyclopaedia, accessed April 2026, https://cfe.tiff.net/canadianfilmencyclopedia/content/films/on-est-au-coton.
• [xliii] Alex Vo, “21 Fun Facts and Stats From 21 Years of Rotten Tomatoes,” Rotten Tomatoes, 8 March 2019, https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/rt-21-fun-facts.
• [xliv] Melnyk, One Hundred Years, 212.
• [xlv] Wyndham Wise, “Toronto New Wave,” Canadian Film Encyclopaedia, accessed April 2026, https://cfe.tiff.net/canadianfilmencyclopedia/Browse/bysubject/toronto-new-wave.
• [xlvi] “I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing,” Wikipedia, last modified 19 February 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27ve_Heard_the_Mermaids_Singing.
• [xlvii] Melnyk, One Hundred Years, 110.
• [xlviii] Wise, “Toronto New Wave.”
• [xlix] “Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner,” Wikipedia, last modified 30 January 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atanarjuat:_The_Fast_Runner.
• [l] Mark Dillon, “Telefilm: The lifeblood of Canadian cinema,” Playback, 6 March, 2017, https://playbackonline.ca/2017/03/06/telefilm-the-lifeblood-of-canadian-cinema.
• [li] Andrew McIntosh, “Sarah Polley,” Canadian Film Encyclopedia, accessed April 2026, https://cfe.tiff.net/canadianfilmencyclopedia/content/bios/sarah-polley.
• [lii] Calum Marsh, “How Operation Avalanche director Matt Johnson boldly infiltrated NASA,” The Globe and Mail, 31 December 2015, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/how-operation-avalanche-director-matt-johnson-boldly-infiltrated-nasa/article27974137.
• [liii] Jean-Pierre Sirois-Trahan, “Le cinéma à l’estomac: Denis Côté and the New Wave of Quebec Cinema,” in Canadian Cinema in the New Millennium, ed. Lee Carruthers and Charles Tepperman (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023), 104-5.
• [liv] Ian Robinson, “Speaking across Borders: Xavier Dolan and the Transnationalism of Contemporary Auteur Cinema in Quebec,” in Canadian Cinema in the New Millennium, ed. Lee Carruthers and Charles Tepperman (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023), 25-41.
• [lv] Calum Marsh, “One-Man Band: A Conversation with Matt Johnson About The Dirties,” Cinema Scope, accessed April 2026, https://cinema-scope.com/features/one-man-band-a-conversation-with-matt-johnson-about-the-dirties-by-calum-marsh.
• [lvi] Kate Robertson, “Nirvanna the Band the Show puts Toronto front and centre in hilarious new show for VICELAND,” NOW Magazine, 2 February 2017, https://nowtoronto.com/movies/nirvanna-the-band-the-show-viceland-matt-johnson-jay-mccarrol.
• [lvii] Barry Hertz, “Inside Telefilm’s sea change to promote new Canadian movies,” The Globe and Mail, 25 November 2017, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/inside-telefilms-sea-change-to-promote-new-canadian-movies/article37078895.
• [lviii] Rachel West, “Canadian Filmmaker Chandler Levack chats I LIKE MOVIES – Rachel West interviews,” Alliance of Women Film Journalists, 6 March 2023, https://awfj.org/blog/2023/03/06/canadian-filmmaker-chandler-levack-chats-i-like-movies-rachel-west-interviews.
• [lix] Barry Hertz, “Canadian movies are tanking at the box office, but there’s a twist that could save our cinema,” The Globe and Mail, 25 February 2026, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/culture/film-and-tv/film/article-canadian-movies-are-tanking-at-the-box-office-but-theres-a-twist-that.
• [lx] Mordecai Richler, “Maple Leaf Power Time,” The New York Times, 26 September 1971, https://www.nytimes.com/1971/09/26/archives/maple-leaf-power-time-maple-leaf.html
• [lxi] Ibid.

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