Topic

Canada

A federation held together by the deliberate absence of a founding myth.

5: in film
13:00: average
65 min: in total
18: across the network

Canada across the network →

All briefs5

13:00

49th Parallel

Michael Powell · 1941

49th Parallel (1941), directed by Michael Powell and written by Emeric Pressburger, follows six German sailors stranded in Canada after their U-boat is destroyed. As they attempt to cross into neutral America, each encounter — with Inuit hunters, Hutterite farmers, a bohemian writer, and a disillusioned soldier — exposes the limits of Nazi ideology. Shot across Canada and at Denham Studios, with music by Ralph Vaughan Williams and editing by David Lean, it is a morally precise, formally restrained war drama that argues through confrontation, not combat.

13:00

Come on Children

Allan King · 1973

Allan King’s 1973 documentary observes Toronto teenagers living unsupervised on a rural Ontario farm for ten weeks. Filmed in early 1971 with no script, no narration beyond a brief opening statement, and no adult presence, it tracks their self-organisation, conflicts and quiet routines. Its power lies in sustained observation, not interpretation — a demanding, unsentimental portrait of adolescence as lived practice rather than developmental phase.

13:00

Mon oncle Antoine

Claude Jutra · 1971

Set on Christmas Eve 1949 in rural Quebec, Mon oncle Antoine follows fifteen-year-old Benoît as he works at his aunt and uncle’s general store and funeral parlour. Through a single day of errands, encounters and quiet betrayals, the film traces the quiet collapse of a conservative, clerical society on the cusp of the Quiet Revolution. Directed by Claude Jutra with Michel Brault’s naturalistic cinematography, it avoids exposition and symbolism alike, trusting observation and restraint to convey moral and historical weight.

13:00

Paddle to the Sea

Bill Mason · 1966

Bill Mason’s 1966 NFB short follows a hand-carved wooden canoe from Lake Nipigon to the Atlantic, using real locations, minimal narration and patient observation. Based on Holling C. Holling’s book but expanded with a quiet critique of water pollution, it is a documentary-fiction hybrid that treats geography as ethics and time as texture.

13:00

I Killed My Mother

Xavier Dolan · 2009

Xavier Dolan’s 2009 debut is a French-language Canadian drama about Hubert, a 16-year-old Québécois whose fierce, fractured relationship with his mother Chantale drives a tightly wound narrative of flight, confrontation, and unspoken loyalty. Written when Dolan was sixteen and shot when he was nineteen, the film uses stylised dialogue, intimate framing, and rhythmic editing to render adolescent interiority as both claustrophobic and theatrical. Anne Dorval gives a grounded, unsentimental performance as Chantale, anchoring the film’s emotional volatility. Though occasionally mannered, its power lies in its refusal to resolve — treating family not as problem or refuge, but as the first and most persistent language.