1.19 (Fri) 14:00-15:30 Press Conference

1.20 (Sat) 12:00-14:00 Closet Monster + Q&A
1.20 (Sat) 15:00-17:00 Sleeping Giant + Q&A

1.20 (Sat) 17:00-18:30 Opening Party (invitation only)
1.20 (Sat) 18:30-20:00 Weirdos
1.20 (Sat) 20:30-22:00 Searchers
1.21 (Sun) 12:00-14:00 Window Horses+ Q&A
1.21 (Sun) 14:30-16:30 Koneline + Q&A

1.21 (Sun) 17:00-19:30 Hello, Destroyer Q&A
1.21 (Sun) 20:00-21:30 Angry Inuk

Closet Monster

Director: Stephen Dunn

Screenwriters: Stephen Dunn

Starring: Aaron Abrams / Jack Futon / Joanne Kelly

Duration: 90 min

Genre: Drama / Mystery

Country: Canada

Language: English

Awards: 2015 Toronto International Film Festival Best Canadian Feature Film

2015 Atlantic Film Festival Best Atlantic Director and Best Atlantic Screenwriter

2016 Toronto Inside Out Lesbian and Gay Film and Video Festival Best Canadian Feature

2016 Melbourne Queer Film Festival Best Feature Jury Award

2016 Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival Best Feature Film

When eight-year-old Oscar Madly finds out that his parents are getting divorced, he retreats into a fantasy world filled with

happy memories of times with his father and tries to cope with his loneliness through conversations with his talking pet hamster, Buffy. The creative and sexually confused youngster is lost, between the brink of adulthood, dysfunctional parents and the disturbing remembrance of a tragic gay bashing he witnessed as a kid. After the departure of his childhood friend, Oscar is dragged into a romance with his coworker. The forbidden fling forces him to face his personal demons, confront his family, dreams and his true self hiding in the dark closet.

Hello Destroyer

Director: Kevan Funk

Screenwriters: Kevan Funk

Starring: Ian Tracey / Sara Canning / Jared Abrahamson

Duration: 110 min

Genre: Drama

Country: Canada

Language: English

Awards: 2017 Vancouver Film Critics Circle
– Best Canadian Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Best British Columbia Film

2017 Leo Awards
– Best Director in a Motion Picture, Best Motion Picture, Best Screenwriting, Cinematography and Lead Performance by a Male in a Motion Picture

2016 Toronto International Film Festival Best Emerging BC Filmmaker

Kevan Funk’s startling debut feature, Hello Destroyer, is an elegant film about the inelegant realities of being a hockey enforcer and literally fighting one’s way to the big leagues. Tyson Burr plays for the minor league Prince George Warriors. In his role as the team’s tough guy, Tyson is expected to protect the more skilled players. Although thoughtful and somewhat shy off the ice, he is told constantly by the team’s coaches that his only route to the professional ranks is by being aggressive on it. When his violent play leads to the serious injury of an opposing player, Tyson suddenly finds himself on the wrong side of the team, the league, the community, and even his family. An astute critique of the culture of violence inherent in Canada’s national sport, Hello Destroyer is also a fascinating drama of identity, masculinity, and isolation. If Ingmar Bergman had made a film about hockey, this would be it.

Sleeping Giant

Director: Andrew Cividino

Screenwriters: Andrew Cividino / Blain Watters / Aaron Yeger

Starring: Jackson Martin / Nick Serino / Reece Moffett

Duration: 89 min

Genre: Adventure / Drama

Country: Canada

Language: English

Awards: 2015 Toronto International Film Festival Best Canadian First Feature Film

2016 Canadian Screen Awards Best Supporting Actor

2016 Vancouver Film Critics Circle Best Supporting Actor, Best Director and Best First Film by a Canadian Director

2015 Cannes Film Festival Critic’s Week Grand Prize and Golden Camera Nomination

The debut feature from emerging writer–director Andrew Cividino, Sleeping Giant is a tempestuous coming–of–age saga set against the serene backdrop of Lake Superior in northern Ontario – the third largest freshwater lake in the world. As the restless Adam, on the cusp of adulthood, spends his summer vacation with his parents on the north shore of Lake Superior, he befriends a wild pair of cousins – Riley and Nate – who pass the long summer days with a reckless routine of debauchery and cliff–jumping. However, the revelation of a hurtful secret triggers Adam to set in motion a series of irreversible events that test the limits of their friendship and change the boys forever.

Searchers (Maliglutit)

Director: Zacharias Kunuk

Screenwriters: Norman Cohn / Zacharias Kunuk

Starring: Benjamin Kunuk / Karen Ivalu / Jonah Qunaq

Duration: 94 min

Genre: Drama

Country: Canada

Language: English

Awards: 2016 Toronto International Film Festival Best Canadian Feature Film and Platform Prize Nomination
2017 Canadian Screen Awards Original Screenplay and Best Motion Picture Nomination

The latest film from Zacharias Kunuk, the writer-director of the critically acclaimed epic The Fast Runner (winner of the Camera d’Or in Cannes and a huge international hit), Searchers is an Inuit reworking and relocating of John Ford’s signature 1956 Western, The Searchers. Transporting its intense tale of abduction and revenge from the dusty American west to the vast snowy vistas of the Canadian Arctic, Kunuk’s film revolves around Kuanana, who returns from a successful caribou hunt to a catastrophic scene. In his absence, someone has attacked his igloo, his wife and daughter have been taken away, and the remainder of the family has been slaughtered. Guided by the spirit helper of his father, a loon named Kallulik, Kuanana, he sets out across the white, seemingly infinite Arctic landscape to get his wife and daughter back and to take revenge on those who have committed these atrocities. It is an unforgettable journey.

Window Horses (The Poetic Persian Epiphany of Rosie Ming)
Director: Ann Marie Fleming

Screenwriters: Ann Marie Fleming / Maryam Najafi

Starring: Ellen Page / Shohreh Aghdashloo / Sandra Oh

Duration: 89 min

Genre: Animation

Country: Canada

Language: English

Awards: 2016 Vancouver International Film Festival Best British Columbia Film

2016 Vancouver Film Critics Circle Best Screenplay for a Canadian Film

2017 Leo Awards Best Overall Sound in Animation Program or Series Nomination

2016 Toronto International Film Festival Best Canadian Feature Film Nomination

Veteran indie animator Ann Marie Fleming’s charming Window Horses follows an aspiring Chinese-Iranian-Canadian poet, Rosie Ming, on an amazing trip to a poetry festival in Iran, where she begins to discover many things about her family history and herself. Travelling alone from her home in Vancouver to Shiraz, the rather awkward, tentative Rosie soon finds herself in the company of renowned Persian poets and writers from Europe who ask about her Iranian roots. While in this heady world of poetry and politics, she uncovers dramatic secrets about the Iranian father she thought had abandoned her as a child. What she learns will change her life forever. At once whimsical and serious, personal and geopolitical, this animated marvel features the voices of such Canadian international stars as Don McKellar, Ellen Page, and Sandra Oh.

Koneline: Our Land Beautiful

Director: Nettie Wild

Screenwriters: Nettie Wild

Duration: 96 min

Genre: Documentary

Country: Canada

Language: English

Awards: 2016 Vancouver International Film Award Women in Film Award

2017 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival Best Canadian Documentary

2017 Vancouver Film Critics Circle Best British Columbia Film Nomination

Koneline: Our Land Beautiful, award-winning documentary filmmaker Nettie Wild’s latest, is a visually stunning celebration of an extraordinary part of the world, as well as a politically charged examination of the agents of ‘progress’ increasingly encroaching on the pristine landscapes of northern British Columbia. Set in the Tahltan territory, the film explores the various human forces, good and not so good, currently at work in this previously unspoiled environment: there are drilling companies looking for diamonds, construction crews erecting massive transmission towers, and indigenous Tahltan people’s community elders protesting and debating what is happening on their land. Rounding out this mesmerizing portrait of a place is a Tahltan man who is struggling to preserve the dying language of his people; indeed, it is the Tahltan word ‘koneline’ which gives the film its title.

Weirdos

Director: Bruce McDonald

Screenwriters: Daniel MacIvor

Starring: Dylan Authors / Julia Sarah Stone / Molly Parker

Duration: 85 min

Genre: Drama / Road Movie

Country: Canada

Language: English

Awards: 2017 Canadian Screen Awards Best Supporting Actress and Best Original Screenplay

2017 Vancouver Film Critics Circle Best Supporting Actress in a Canadian Film

2016 Toronto International Film Festival Best Canadian Feature Film Nomination

From renowned director Bruce McDonald, a key figure in Canadian film for over three decades, comes Weirdos, an offbeat and endearing coming-of-age story of teenagers in small town Nova Scotia in 1976. As July 4th approaches and America gets ready to celebrate its Bicentennial, up in Canada 15 year-old platonic pals Kit and Alice decide to hitchhike out of their tiny Canadian town to go visit Kit’s gloriously eccentric and unstable mother, Laura (Molly Parker), in faraway Sydney. In addition to the romantic tension growing between them (or is it?), little did they know that their summer trip would lead them straight down the road to the strange confusions of adulthood. An understated, insightful existential road movie, Weirdos boasts an excellent 1970s soundtrack, a dollop or two of magic realism, and an impressive ensemble cast – even Andy Warhol shows up!

Angry Inuk

Director: Alethea Arnaquq-Baril

Screenwriters: Alethea Arnaquq-Baril

Duration: 85 min

Genre: Documentary

Country: Canada

Language: English

Awards: 2016 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival Top 20 Audience Favorites and Best Canadian Documentary Promotion Award

2017 Santa Barbara International Film Festival Social Justice Award

Alethea Arnaquq-Baril takes a close look at the central role of seal hunting in the lives of the Inuit, the importance of the revenue they earn from sales of seal skins, and the negative impact that international campaigns against the seal hunt have had on their lives. Armed with social media and their own sense of humour and justice, this group is bringing its own voice into the conversation and presenting themselves to the world as a modern people in dire need of a sustainable economy.

Fraser Ash (Producer)

Fraser Ash is a producer of feature films, television series and documentaries. Ash graduated from Queen’s university with a degree in Philosophy and minor in Film Studies. He has been at Rhombus Media since 2010 in Toronto to produce films. In 2015, he produced four feature films which premiered at TIFF: Closet Monster (Best Canadian Feature); Hyena Road; Into The Forest and Zoom. He is also a co-producer on the CBC comedy series Michael: Every Day and Sensitive Skin. The latter production won four Canadian Screen Awards and was nominated for an Emmy Award. Ash has also been supervising documentary production ranging from Enemy (premiered at TIFF in 2013) and Our Man In Tehran (premiered at TIFF in 2013, won five Canadian Screen Awards).

Kevan Funk (Director)
Kevan Funk is a film director and screenwriter, whose award-winning debut feature film, Hello Destroyer, world premiered at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival and was named one of Canada's Top Ten films of the year. At the Leo Awards in 2017, Funk won both Best Director and Best Screenplay for the film. Originally from Vancouver, British Columbia, he is a graduate of Emily Carr University of Art and Design. He has also directed music videos; in 2017, he won a Much Music Video Award as Best Director for A Tribe Called Red's Stadium Pow Wow.

Andrew Cividino (Director)

Andrew Cividino grew up in Dundas, Ontario and attended the film production program at Ryerson University. His short film We Ate the Children Last (2011) was selected by the Toronto International Film Festival as one of Canada's Top Ten shorts of 2011.Sleeping Giant (2015), based on his 2014 Top Ten short of the same name, is his first feature. The film world premiered at the Critic’s Week session in Cannes in 2015 and went on to win many awards, including the Best Canadian First Feature Film (Toronto International Film Festival) and Best Canadian Film Award (Vancouver International Film Festival).

Ann Marie Fleming (Director)

Ann Marie Fleming is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and artist. She has created work in a variety of genres, and often focuses on the themes of family, history, and memory. She has completed artist residencies at the Canadian Film Center and The Akademie Schloss Solitude in Germany. She has taught at the Chicago’s School of the Art Institute and Emily Carr University, as well as given workshops and lectures in Universities across North America, Asia and Europe. Her over 30 films have won numerous awards, from student festivals to TIFF. Her first graphic novel, adapted from her documentary film, The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam, won the Doug Wright Best Canadian Comic and was nominated for two Eisner Awards. Her latest award-wining film Window Horses (The Poetic Persian Epiphany of Rosie Ming) is Fleming’s first fictional feature animation.

Nettie Wild（Director）
Nettie Wild is one of Canada’s leading documentary filmmakers. Her latest feature KONELĪNE: Our Land Beautiful, is currently in theatrical distribution worldwide. It won Best Canadian Documentary at the 2016 Hot Docs International Film Festival. At the same time, Nettie has launched UNINTERRUPTED, a cinematic spectacle using digital mapping to project images of the sockeye migration right across Vancouver’s Cambie street bridge. Nettie Wild’s films have been distributed theatrically, and broadcast in Canada and internationally. She has been honored at film festivals around world including winning the Genie Award (twice) for Best Feature Documentary in Canada, Best Feature Documentary from the International Documentary Association as well as top honors from the Forum of New Cinema at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Embassy of Canada in China

Telefilm Canada

BARCO