Toronto International Film Festival releases Top Ten lists for 2020

TORONTO — Features from Deepa Mehta, Tracey Deer, and Michelle Latimer are among those on the Toronto International Film Festival’s best-of-the-year list.

The annual TIFF Canada’s Top Ten list includes the Mehta-directed “Funny Boy,” which is Canada’s submission to the Oscars for best international feature film and is streaming on CBC Gem.

Mehta also co-wrote the story with Shyam Selvadurai, who penned the novel that inspired the film, about a Tamil boy growing up gay during deadly conflict in Sri Lanka in the 1970s and ’80s.

Deer is on the list with “Beans,” about a 12-year-old Mohawk girl coming of age during the 1990 Oka Crisis.

And Latimer made the cut with the documentary “Inconvenient Indian,” which is adapted from Thomas King’s acclaimed 2012 non-fiction book and won two awards at TIFF in September.

Other films on the top 10 list include:

– “Fauna” by Nicolas Pereda, a comical look at so-called “narco” violence in Mexico.

– Mike Hoolboom’s “Judy Versus Capitalism,” about Canadian feminist activist Judy Rebick.

– “The Kid Detective” by Evan Morgan, a dark comedy releasing VOD/digital on Dec. 15.

– The Olympic swimmer drama “Nadia, Butterfly” by Pascal Plante, which was chosen for the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year and is now available on digital/VOD platforms.

– Sean Durkin’s family thriller “The Nest,” which stars Jude Law and Carrie Coon and is now available on digital/VOD platforms, including digital TIFF Bell Lightbox.

– “No Ordinary Man” by Aisling Chin-Yee and Chase Joynt, about the life of jazz musician Billy Tipton, who was outed as a transgender man after his death in 1989.

– Brandon Cronenberg’s sci-fi horror “Possessor,” which is also now available on digital/VOD platforms, including digital TIFF Bell Lightbox.

TIFF says it plans to feature other Canada’s Top Ten selections in the near future.

The organization says the list has seven first or second features, and films by six filmmakers of colour and three Indigenous filmmakers. Forty per cent of the features are directed or co-directed by women.

TIFF’s internal programming team — Cameron Bailey, Diana Sanchez, and Steve Gravestock — chose the titles. 

TIFF also released its annual list of Top 10 shorts, 50 per cent of which were directed or co-directed by women.

Gravestock chose the shorts with TIFF programmer Robyn Citizen, in consultation with Short Cuts programmers Jason Anderson and Lisa Haller.

The shorts are: “Aniksha” by Vincent Toi; “The Archivists” by Igor Drljaca; “Benjamin, Benny, Ben” by Paul Shkordoff;  “Black Bodies” by Kelly Fyffe-Marshall; “êmîcêtôcêt: Many Bloodlines” by Theola Ross; “Foam” (“Écume”) by Omar Elhamy;  “How To Be At Home” by Andrea Dorfman;  “Scars” by Alex Anna; “Sing Me a Lullaby” by Tiffany Hsiung; and “Stump The Guesser” by Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 9, 2020.

Victoria Ahearn, The Canadian Press