A survivalist expert recruits a group of ordinary people united by fears of an impending societal collapse, and trains them at his remote lodge in the woods. When one of their training activities leads to a fatal accident, the group is divided about what to do and the tensions soon turn violent. Divided into opposing factions each with a full arsenal, they enter into a true fight for survival, one far greater than what they’d trained for.

"A first feature for director Patrice Laliberté and several of his principal collaborators, The Decline is lean, credible and well-crafted” - Dennis Harvey, Variety

This fascinating drama tells the story of Brother Jean (Sébastien Ricard), a priest teaching in the Charlevoix region of Quebec in the 1940s. A passionate amateur archaeologist, Jean plans an expedition with his students to find proof of the presence of a Viking settlement along the shores of the St-Lawrence River. The film won three Prix Iris, including best actor for Ricard.

In this uplifting story, 12-year-old Janeau (Pilon) and his father have moved to a new town after the tragic death of his mother. As they struggle to adjust, Janeau is befriended by Julie (Morel-Michaud), a goalie for the local pee-wee hockey team, The Lynx, who are preparing for a province-wide championship.

Julie immediately sniffs out Janeau’s hockey talent, and eventually convinces her coach to let Janeau join the team, much to the dismay of the team’s current star, Joey (Goulet), and his overbearing father.

This stirring hockey comedy will have audiences cheering for The Lynx as they race to settle their differences — both on and off the ice — before the championship.

Paul is a cartoonist who lives with his girlfriend and their little daughter. His in-laws are a large, joyful clan with a much loved patriarch, whose health is failing. Based on a graphic novel of the same name, Paul à Québec is the touching story of a family coping with life’s troubles with courage, tenderness and lots of love.

Bored Montreal housewife Bernadette (Lanctôt) decides to trade in her comfortable life in the city for a simpler existence in rural Quebec. With her son in tow, Bernadette moves into a rundown farmhouse where they attempt to make their living off the land. The newcomer’s arrival coincides with changes in her new community, and Bernadette can’t help but get involved in the politics of rural life.

Subversive and light-hearted, the film pokes fun at Bernadette’s romantic idealism with affectionate humanity.

For centuries, the villagers of Île aux Coudres, a small island in the St. Lawrence River, hunted beluga whales by creating a sort of “fence” of saplings in shallow, muddy waters, trapping the mammals in low tide as they swim by.

In 1962, Michel Brault and a team of filmmakers travelled to the island to document the resumption of the practice decades after it had been abandoned, shedding light and wit on this “resourceful” tradition.

A balance of grace, humour, and up-close observation, Pour la suite du monde is known as a landmark achievement in documentary filmmaking and was screened at the Cannes film festival.

Les Plouffe is an adaptation of Roger Lemelin’s WWII-set novel, chronicling seven years in the lives of a poor family living in the Basse-Ville area of Quebec City.

This is kitchen-sink drama at its most satirical, dramatizing an entire era in the quirks of this memorable clan. The lovable characters and unforgettable moments make Les Plouffe a simultaneously sad, funny and loving account of life in WWII-era Quebec.

This French Canadian classic won seven Genie Awards, including Best Achievement in Direction, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role (Filiatrault).

Gaby (Arcand) lives alone on his family farm, while his two adult daughters live far away in the big cities. For Gaby, family always comes first. When Gaby’s eldest daughter finds herself in a financial emergency, she asks her father for immediate support to avoid losing her house for good. Gaby’s surprising response turns the whole family inside out, forcing everyone to re-examine the things they hold most dear.

A beautiful, evocative and emotionally powerful film about family, connection and growing older, whose startling insight and emotional maturity belies the youth of its director.

Pierre (Drolet) is a mild-mannered university lecturer, alienated from his family and the world around him, and absorbed in his work translating obscure Polish poet Edward Stachura. Slowly, the solitary academic is drawn in by the poetry to do some serious soul-searching.

While the world outside his work hardly seemed to exist for Pierre at the start of the film, he is soon opened up to the possibility of reconnecting with his own past, which arrives in the form of an estranged daughter whom he abandoned years before.

This quiet, subtle and poetic drama about forgiveness, atonement and love is anchored by Drolet’s exquisite performance as the lonely Pierre.

On Christmas Eve, a snow plow operator (Guy L’Ecuyer) in Montreal is suddenly called upon to work in an unexpected snowstorm which becomes a problem as he has not finished his Christmas shopping. Determined to get all his gifts while continuing to clear the roads, Léopold has a series of comedic misadventures that become increasingly ridiculous as his time begins to run short.

Originally commissioned as an NFB documentary about snow clearing, director Gilles Carle creatively reframed it as a narrative film to create a unique blend of documentary and direct cinema that also cheekily comments on contemporary social and political issues. It won the Best Feature prize at the 1965 Montreal International Film Festival.

Jacques (Côté) and Marc (Houde) are father-and-son cops who don't exactly get along, but when a fellow officer is kidnapped by a biker gang, they're forced to partner up in order to save his life.

The pair infiltrates an outdoor camp for fathers and sons to snag Charles Bérubé (Girard), the biker gang's lawyer. As Jacques and Marc try to locate their missing colleague, they find the camp's bonding activities are having an emotional and hilarious impact on their own relationship.

De père en flic is the highest-grossing French-language film in Canadian history.

"A can't-miss buddy comedy about a pair of dysfunctional father-son cops who are forced to go undercover at a touchy-feely bonding retreat...a genuinely amusing hybrid." — Michael Rechtshaffen, Hollywood Reporter

At once creepy and thought-provoking, Saints-Martyrs-des-Damnés is an eerie and playful supernatural thriller. Tabloid reporter Flavien (Chénier) and his photographer buddy Armand (Robitaille) are dispatched to a rural Quebec village to investigate a series of mysterious disappearances. But things quickly begin to go awry when Armand vanishes on their very first night in town.

The town’s inhabitants are a strange group — a mayor who rules with an iron fist, the creepy twins running the motel, the woman who serenades cows, a masked mechanic, and many others. But Flavien can’t get anyone to help him, as they’re all suspicious and even downright aggressive toward him. With an arresting visual style and quirky sense of humour, the film pushes the boundaries of the conventional thriller, tackling questions about identity, responsibility and mortality in a refreshing way.

In a country cottage beside the still waters of Lake Memphremagog in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, eight intellectuals share a night of frank discussion about life, love, sex and everything in between.

While the story is set in the world of academia, there’s nothing bookish or stuffy about the stories that emerge! Satirical and witty, Le déclin evolves from a comedy of manners to a poignant and moving exploration of relationship and loss.

Ranking twice in the Top 10 Canadian Films of All Time list (both the 1993 and 2004 lists), the film was nominated for an Academy Award and winner of nine Genie Awards.

Based on the tragic school shooting that took place at Montreal’s École Polytechnique on December 6, 1989 (known as the “Montreal Massacre”), director Denis Villeneuve’s melancholy docudrama portrays the events as seen from the perspective of two students.

There are some tragedies so devastating they defy rational understanding. Villeneuve films in black and white, shifting back and forth in time, attempting to maintain a sane and calm point of view in the face of just such a senseless act of violence. The result is a sensitive yet stark account of one of the more profoundly disturbing crimes in recent Canadian history.

The film won nine Genie Awards, including Best Motion Picture, and five Jutra Awards. The Toronto Film Critics Association awarded it the Best Canadian Film Prize, with critic Brian D. Johnson referring to it as “a film of astonishing courage.”

In French Canada and abroad, the series of films spawned from Les Boys is both beloved by audiences and box offices alike. But the title garçons in Les Boys are hardly young dudes at all — they’re grown men!

In this original, fun and hilarious prequel set in 1965, we find Les Boys as they originally were: hardy teenagers. Dreaming of victory in the Holiday tournament, the team is on Christmas vacation, but it’s anything but a restful experience: they have goals to make and trophies to win.

Full of wonderful highs and lows that evoke the rollercoaster experience of adolescence, When We Were Boys is a rare thing in cinema: a terrific and successful prequel.

Dramatic and gripping, this popular series illustrates pivotal moments in Canada’s history, bringing a compelling intimacy to grand, historic developments. From the stories passed down through oral tradition to the first encounters between Indigenous peoples and Europeans, through the battles that engulfed the continent and the formation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867, to the modern era of feminism, multiculturalism and globalization, this captivating series brings to life the moments that have shaped our nation, telling Canada’s story through the eyes of the people who lived it.

Canada: A People’s History won the Gemini Award for Best Documentary Series and attracted over 14 million viewers. It is a collaborative production between the CBC and Radio-Canada and is available in both English and French.

Students can explore Canadian history further by delving into the series’ award-winning website (www.cbc.ca/history), which features behind-the-scenes footage, games, puzzles, lesson plans and links to other historical resources.

Each 105 minute episode is made up of several 10-to-15-minute segments, which can be shown independently. For a more detailed breakdown of the topics covered in each episode, please see www.cbc.ca/history.

 

SERIES 1: 15,000 B.C. to 1800 A.D. For centuries, the territory now known as Canada is home to over 50 Indigenous nations, each with unique traditions and culture. In the 16th century, European explorers arrive, creating Canada’s first colonies, and forever changing the landscape and the lives of the First Peoples.

SERIES 2: 1670 to 1873 By the 1800s, British exploration opens the West to settlement, laying the foundation of a new nation, but also displacing and devastating Indigenous inhabitants. Confederation soon follows, with the creation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867.

SERIES 3: 1873 to 1940 Canada’s early years are fraught with economic depression, rebellions and tension between English- and French-speaking Canadians. Immigration, rapid growth and sociopolitical change follow, ending abruptly with World War II, a pivotal moment in Canada’s quest for autonomy that comes at the enormous cost of 60,000 lives.

SERIES 4: 1940 to 1990 The end of the Great Depression and the flames and ravages of World War II give way to a new era of peace, progress and prosperity, as well as free trade, globalization, feminism, Indigenous land claims, multiculturalism, Québec nationalism and the explosion of computer technology.

A young boy is raised in the French countryside by his grandma, who buys him a bicycle and encourages his dream of winning the Tour de France, in this whimsical animation. However, he gets kidnapped by a group of Mafia gangsters and taken to the big city of Belleville, where he is used for his bicycling prowess in an elaborate gambling scheme. Along with her faithful companion Bruno, his grandmother sets out to rescue him, and ends up befriending a trio of aging musicians who were once the '30s jazz trio known as The Triplets of Belleville.

Features an original jazz musical score by Benoît Charest.

In this warm-hearted comedy, Yves (Philippe-Audrey Larrue St-Jacques), while still the best player on his minor league team, knows that his chances of making it in the NHL are slowly fading. When he suffers a serious injury, he thinks that he might finally be done for good - until his cousin convinces him to take one last shot at a comeback. Together, they drive from northern Quebec to Thunder Bay in the hopes of having him play in a national tournament.

While it begins as a story about following one's dreams, Les Barbares de la Malbaie also looks at the journey of self-discovery that comes when dreams don't go quite as planned.

At a lakeside retreat, lifelong friends Matthias (Gabriel D'Almeida Freitas) and Maxime (Xavier Dolan) agree to star in a student film in which they have to share a kiss. Matthias, who is in a long-term relationship with a woman, is surprised that the kiss awakens in him unexpected feelings for his friend, causing him to question his own sexuality. As his confusion starts to take over his life, Matthias must try to come to terms with his identity before he loses everything.

This latest film from acclaimed filmmaker Xavier Dolan is a touching story of self-discovery that was nominated for Seven Prix Iris and was named to TIFF's Canada’s Top 10 of the year.

Rami (Ali Ammar) is a shy, physically disabled young man — but on the Internet, he poses as a successful businessman. That is, until the girl he’s been messaging wants to meet him….