Tentative on Toronto

There hasn't been exciting news out of this week's Toronto International Film Festival, and other previews of the fall season are looking pretty grim. We're not hopeful.

But there's this glimpse from the Globe & Mail of a few nuggets out of Canada that will get tucked deep into the queue:

In a welcome twist, the Canadian contingent has never been stronger. Although homegrown filmmakers no longer have a dedicated program – and opening night has ceded to underwhelming Hollywood fare – this year heralded a new generation of artists so talented that it throws the entire narrative of obligatory CanCon into question. Andrew Cividino’s Sleeping Giant is a masterpiece: not just the best Canadian film of the year, but one of the best to play the festival, period. Kazik Radwanski’s How Heavy This Hammer, Stephen Dunn’s Closet Monster and Igor Drljaca’s The Waiting Room are all works of startling confidence. Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton, meanwhile, is a delirious pseudo-documentary by Guy Maddin and Galen and Evan Johnson (it screened for free at the Bell Lightbox, though in an out-of-the-way and poorly promoted location, perhaps the gravest TIFF insult to its countrymen since the 2010 fest opened with Score: A Hockey Musical). It was as if witnessing a new era of Canadian cinema – one that’s more independent, ferocious and unconcerned about the country’s outdated star system (cough, Paul Gross’s Hyena Road and Atom Egoyan’s Remember, cough).