Canada could be proud of its crews at last year’s Academy Awards, when Toronto-shot Chicago took moviedom’s top prize. Now, who would have thought that, 12 months later, an indigenous Canadian movie would take home a best film trophy from Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre? Denys Arcand’s The Barbarian Invasions did just that, winning the Oscar for best foreign-language film.

The movie is set unmistakably and unashamedly in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It makes specific, barbed references to the state of the province’s health care system. ‘Who would give a rat’s posterior about what goes on in Canadian hospitals?’ our national inferiority complex might have asked. Well, are they not concerned about health care in the United States – the country whose approval we seem to require – or in any other corner of the world? So why should such a story not be set in Montreal?

It took Arcand a few years to figure this out. The director built his international reputation on a couple of films that also competed for the best foreign-language Oscar: The Decline of the American Empire (1986), which featured a group of Quebec intellectuals musing about life and sex, providing characters that would reappear in Invasions; and Jesus of Montreal (1989). Note how the latter’s title is not Jesus of Generic North American City.

Who knows whose voice got to him, but Arcand then decided to make a feature in English, Love and Human Remains (1993), presumably to try to penetrate the U.S. market via American distributor Sony Pictures Classics. Not only was the film not in Arcand’s mother tongue, but, unlike his previous two, it was based on somebody else’s material, in this case a play by Brad Fraser. Further diluting the flavor, the film takes place in a nameless Canadian city, whereas Fraser’s play is set in his hometown of Edmonton. This kind of homogeneous locale is a pet Canadian film peeve of critics such as Gerald Pratley, as he says in a perspective in this issue. Reviews for the film were, at best, mixed.

Then, in 2000, came Stardom, cowritten by Arcand and set partially in Montreal. Still, it was clearly contrived for wide appeal, shot in English and featuring scenes in New York, London and Paris. In the words of Arcand himself, the movie ‘bombed miserably.’

Arcand, once Canada’s most cherished filmmaker, later reportedly considered hanging up his bullhorn for good. Until, that is, he returned to a project truly close to his heart, one about Montreal people and issues he knew very well – a revisiting of the characters from Decline. And the rest, as they say, is Canadian movie history.

This kind of success need not be limited to Quebec. Take The Snow Walker, an excellent new 10/10 Canadian feature from Vancouver’s Infinity Media. Based on a story by Belleville, ON-born Farley Mowat, it is written and directed by Charles Martin Smith, a Vancouver transplant for the last 20 years, stars B.C. actor Barry Pepper, and is set in the Northwest Territories. The film is getting the strong word of mouth it deserves.

Films like The Barbarian Invasions and The Snow Walker should fill producers with hope – and the resolve to win, Canadian style.