A new new wave of truly Canadian cinema is telling a different kind of story

At the heart of the Toronto New Wave movement in the 1980s and '90s was a search for identity — specifically, finding our country's distinctive cinematic identity. Rather than playing Hollywood's game of commercial appeal, a group of filmmakers in the city began making films that would speak directly to Canadians.

More than thirty years later, Canada finds itself in the midst of another cinematic shift that concerns itself with the same goal — that is, a desire to speak to Canadians. Only this time around, who those Canadians are looks a bit different.

Recently, there's been an explosion of stories by racialized creatives about their communities in film and television across the country, presumably in an effort to mirror Canada's diversity. Although the faces and spaces vary, a common thread exists throughout the vast majority of these projects: trauma. Trauma from being shunned by classmates in the school lunchroom for eating food other than baloney and yellow mustard sandwiched between white bread. The trauma of trying to navigate new systems with only a basic understanding of English or French. The trauma inherited while struggling to fit into the Western European ideal.

"I've been doing this for 20 years now [and] in the beginning of my career, I felt like I sat in a lot of film festivals and watched really, really sad movies," says writer, director and actress Kaniehtiio Horn in an interview with CBC Arts ahead of the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). "It kind of made me turn off of film festivals to be honest."

Horn and her family were involved in the 1990 Oka Crisis, and as she began wading into the world of filmmaking, an expectation hung over her to use that experience in her work. "It was such a momentous part of our history in Canada and in the world, in terms of Indigenous resistance," says Horn. "We can talk about it — I'll talk about it forever — but my instinct is to use the rage and the trauma and channel it into other things."

"I know that we still have to tell these stories, but I didn't want to make that story. I want to do something different," she adds.

That "something different" has manifested in Horn's directorial debut, a campy comedy action called Seeds, which had its world premiere last week at TIFF. In Seeds, Horn — in her first leading role — plays Ziggy, a fledgling influencer who nabs her first ad partner right before being asked to return to her community to take over house-sitting duties from her cousin.

After rekindling relationships and reacquainting herself with her aunt's home, Ziggy finds herself in a precarious situation when a mysterious figure stalks her, forcing the protagonist to defend not only her family's property, but to avenge generations of stolen heritage. Horn imparts her film with a biting dark humour that only serves to elevate the outrageous — and satisfying — acts of violence shown. The tone of Seeds prevails as a departure from the usual type of Indigenous film that gets the green light in Canada.

"A lot of white people like the trauma thing. They don't want to see us laughing and being strong, processing this stuff and coming out on top," Horn says. "And I'm not talking about everybody; I mean the people who were funding these things. They'd rather watch us be sad than be strong."

Those are valuable stories, but they're not the only stories.- Amar Wala, writer and director

Toronto-based writer and director Amar Wala, whose first narrative feature, Shook, will make its world premiere at TIFF this year, similarly acknowledges the significant role that the people who make funding decisions play.

"There's more opportunity and more openness to funding BIPOC-led stories now, but that didn't come easy," Wala says, citing the advocacy he and his fellow filmmakers exercised over the last few years, particularly during the pandemic.

"Something shifted, partly because of the advocacy, but also partly because the industry was trying to find a lane for filmmakers of colour," he explains. "We saw quite a bit of funding go to BIPOC filmmakers [and stories], but a lot of them had to do with ideas of trauma and pain. And those are valuable stories, but they're not the only stories."

He continues: "Creating a lane for BIPOC [filmmakers] to get more money for their films sounds great on paper, but the problem with that is if you're only funding work that touches on histories of racism and diaspora, and you don't do the smaller stuff or the everyday stuff, what you're essentially saying is, 'That lane is for you, but the other lanes are still for who we've always funded.' So the system itself isn't really changing, it's just creating a new lane for us, and that's not what we want. We want it to fundamentally change so we can all tell whatever kind of stories we want."

The kind of story Wala wanted to tell was the intimate portrait of a family facing a Parkinson's disease diagnosis in the wake of a fresh divorce, with an adult son also struggling to find his feet professionally and personally. Shook replaces tears over displacement with jokes over Hakka food, while also grounding the film in moments of anger and frustration over the diagnosis and life in general.

"I thought we [needed] stories that are about our healing, and about the journey back from pain, rather than just about the pain," says Wala. "[Shook] felt like a more intimate family story that's fun and warm — the kind of thing that I'm not getting to see, particularly in Canada. And so far, it feels like audiences are responding to that, because that's also something they really want to see."

A big indicator of a shift in what defines a Canadian film is the movies submitted to the Academy Awards for consideration in the best international feature category. Given the eligibility requirement that the majority of the film's dialogue is spoken in a language other than English, Canada's submissions have, historically, been mostly French Canadian productions. Before 2006, in fact, the academy stipulated that the language spoken in the film had to be an official language of the submitting country.

Since the rule change, however, Canada's submissions have included films spoken in Hindi (Water), Inuktitut (The Necessities of Life, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner), Arabic (Incendies, Monsieur Lazhar, Antigone), Lingala (War Witch), Yiddish (Felix and Meira), Mohawk and Algonquin (Hochelaga, Land of Souls), Spanish (Drunken Birds) and Mandarin (Eternal Spring). Canada's submission last year, Rojek, contained Kurdish, Arabic and German, in addition to French and English.

This year's selection continues the pattern with Matthew Rankin's Universal Language, an absurdist comedy set in a future Winnipeg, where French and Farsi are the only spoken languages and the city's Tim Hortons sells Persian tea. The film, receiving its North American premiere at TIFF, delightfully mixes elements of Canadian and Iranian cultures together, envisioning a new normal for the city and country.

One of the storylines in the film — wherein two sisters find money frozen in the ice and attempt to extract it — was actually inspired by a story Rankin's grandmother told him about her childhood in Winnipeg during the Depression. He likened the tale to Iranian fable films from the 1970s and '80s. "I had this fantasy to make a movie out of this family story using the cinematic language of these Iranian films," he says.

"It's not a completely Canadian film, not an Iranian film," explains Ila Firouzabadi, one of the film's co-writers. "For me, it's really interesting that we mix all these things together. I'm really delighted about it, because finally, we passed the borders and we talked [about] something more universal."

Pirouz Nemati, the other co-writer of Universal Language, agrees that the magic of this film comes from the unique way the filmmakers have blended seemingly disparate cultures. "I'm really excited for Iranians to see this film," he says. "I think that they've never seen anything like this — a film made by Iranians in such a manner that really brings [us] all together, under the roof of Tim Hortons."

Although the Persian influence on this future Winnipeg is designed to feel jarring — or at least noteworthy — it's remarkable how quickly we settle into the idea that a Canadian city has deviated so greatly from its Anglo dressing. As Firouzabadi and Nemati say, the film's cultural details are secondary to its human stories. The details simply exist. And isn't that the ultimate goal? For people to exist as they wish?

Rome wasn't built in a day and it'll probably take a decade or more before we see a regular output of films like Universal Language that seamlessly cross borders and blend cultures, or films like Shook that celebrate the everyday challenges faced by all families, or genre fare like Seeds that turn trauma into ass kicking pulp. But if the Canadian offerings at TIFF this year are any indication, we're on our way, with gentle indie comedies such as The Mother and the Bear and apocalyptic thrillers like 40 Acres.

"It's still slow moving, but I'm very happy [with] the direction that it's going in Canada," says Horn. She mentions Cody Lightning's mockumentary Hey, Viktor! and the new Crave comedy series Don't Even as examples of what's possible. "I think we're only going to get better and better."

Wala agrees. "I know the talent is here. I know the appetite to make the work is here. I just think that we haven't been able to prove the audience [box office] part yet. But that's coming. That's the next thing."

Canada has long enjoyed an international reputation for diversity and acceptance, while the opportunities given to our storytellers have, for the most part, been restricted to a narrow perspective. Ultimately, it's up to those in positions of power within our institutions to continue to widen the scope when it comes to what stories can be told by filmmakers from racialized communities as well as across genders, sexual identities and religions. While progress has been made, the battle has yet to be won. But with a new new wave approaching, we're closer than ever to a cinematic landscape that is well and truly Canadian.