David Cronenberg, Sarah Polley, Xavier Dolan Dominate Top Canadian Film List

TORONTO – Xavier Dolan’s award-winning film Laurence Anyways bowed in Cannes, where it earned an acting award for Suzanne Clément, before taking the best Canadian film prize in Toronto.

But the Montreal director missed out on possibly becoming an Oscar nominee when fellow Quebec filmmaker Kim Nguyen saw his Congo child soldier drama Rebelle chosen by Canada to contend in the Academy Awards’ best foreign language film category.

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On Tuesday, Dolan and Nguyen came together when, along with David Cronenberg, Deepa Mehta and Sarah Polley, they saw their latest work make the Toronto International Film Festival’s top film list of 2012.

In a competitive field, a panel of industry professionals put Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis, which stars Robert Pattinson, Mehta’s Midnight’s Children, a collaboration with Salman Rushdie, and Polley’s documentary Stories We Tell on the 12th edition of Canada’s Top Ten list.

Also making the cut is Michael Dowse’s hockey comedy Goon, which stars Seann William Scott and Jay Baruchel, Michael McGowan’s Still and Peter Mettler’s The End of Time.

Rounding out the 12th edition of Canada’s Top Ten list is Sean Garrity’s My Awkward Sexual Adventure and Nisha Pahuja’s The World Before Her.

The ten best Canadian films of 2012 will tour Canada to build awareness of homegrown films, to include an early January run at Bell Lightbox in Toronto.

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Left off the best film list was Sudz Sutherland’s Home Again, which stars CCH Pounder and Tatyana Ali, Jason Buxton’s Blackbird, which won the best debut Canadian feature at Toronto, and Brandon Cronenberg’s debut feature Antiviral, which bowed in Cannes.

And unlike recent years, Quebec films did not dominate the Canadian film list, with pictures like Manon Briand’s Liverpool, Luc Picard’s Esimesca and Claude Desrosiers’ L’Empire Bosse also ending up as notable omissions.