It’s looking to be a good year for filmmakers from B.C. and Quebec at the Toronto International Film Festival. The fest unveiled its full lineup of Canuck films on Aug. 2 and has loaded its Canada First! program with selections from the west and la belle province – starting with Louise Archambault’s first outing, Familia.

The story of a mother and daughter’s turbulent relationship, starring Sylvie Moreau and Mylène Saint-Sauveur, will open the program’s sophomore year at TIFF next month.

‘It’s about the general cycle of behaviour,’ Archambault told reporters. ‘How do you change behaviour that is non-desired behaviour of your parents? So, good luck.’ Archambault has previously directed the shorts Mensonges and Atomic Sake.

CF! spotlights first-time domestic features and directors making their first appearance at TIFF. It has become one of the fest’s center-ring attractions since it replaced Perspective Canada last year.

Other Canucks – including Sturla Gunnarsson, Clement Virgo, Deepa Mehta and Thom Fitzgerald – will play in Visions, the documentary and world cinema programs, and as special presentations. Eighty-seven domestic features and shorts in all, culled from 733 submissions.

Programmer Steve Gravestock summarized this year’s crop, quipping, ‘We saw many films concerning sexual awakening, family relationships, loss of memory, creativity, romantic relationships – and sexual awakening.’

CF! also includes Saint-Martyrs-des-Damnés, a mystery by Robin Aubert, Denis Côté’s Les Étates Nordiques and the Nova Scotia/Quebec copro These Girls by John Hazlett. Les Étates Nordiques is the story of a son and his terminally ill mother, while Girls stars David Boreanaz (Angel) as a young hunk trying to escape his three over-sexed girlfriends.

From B.C, Dylan Akio Smith directs The Cabin Movie, a comical take on middle-class swingers, and David Ray brings Fetching Cody, about a street kid who travels back in time to save his girlfriend. Three sisters turn to religion and superstition to save their family in Julia Kwan’s Eve & and the Fire Horse, while a son tries to fix his father’s business in Aubrey Nealon’s A Simple Curve.

The program also includes the Alberta-made Six Figures by David Christensen and the mock-doc The Life and Hard Times of Guy Terrifico from Ontario’s Michael Mabbott.

‘Quebec is definitely having a very strong year,’ says programmer Stacey Donen, and not just because of its recent commercial hits. ‘There are films, like C.R.A.Z.Y., that are doing really well commercially and critically. And Bernard Émond’s new film is a fantastic, fantastic film.’

That movie, La Neuvaine, is part of Contemporary World Cinema and turns on the chance encounter between two strangers at a Catholic shrine. ‘It’s very quiet and spiritual, but I think Bernard is on his way to becoming Canada’s next sort of master filmmaker,’ says Donen.

C.R.A.Z.Y. – still tearing up the box office in Quebec – is also part of CWC and will play alongside Sean Garrity’s Lucid, Ann Marie Fleming’s The French Guy, Amnon Buchbinder’s coming-of-age Whole New Thing, and Horloge Biologique by Ricardo Trogi, a comedy that hit Quebec theaters earlier this month.

‘There are a fair bit of first films coming out of B.C.,’ says Donen, nodding to Cabin Movie and others. ‘I think the film community in Vancouver is very supportive of young filmmakers. I think they mentor their filmmakers very well.’

Donen says it’s ‘a great thrill’ to see directors making personal films, despite the vogue for more commercial fare. ‘We have a few of those personal films that are very intriguing,’ he says, citing Fleming’s The French Guy.

‘It’s a lot of fun,’ he adds. ‘A bit gruesome but very funny. It’s nice to have filmmakers like that – who have a reputation as an artist – that go back and do something very low budget, very independent.’ Fleming made a splash at the 2003 fest with her doc The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam.

Other familiar names will be back at this year’s TIFF. Clement Virgo (Rude) will debut his latest, the sexually explicit Lie With Me, in the Visions program. Sturla Gunnarsson (Rare Birds) will screen Beowulf & Grendel – a retelling of the eighth-century epic with Gerard Butler and Stellan Skarsgård – along with Three Needles by Thom Fitzgerald (The Hanging Garden), an AIDS drama with Lucy Liu, Chlöe Sevigny and Olympia Dukakis.

Allan King has again renamed his latest doc, and will screen Memory for Max, Claire, Ida and Company in the Masters program. The film – previously known by the working titles Dementia and Mind and Memory – spends time with five residents of a geriatric center and follows his 2003 TIFF hit Dying at Grace.

Other docs on the list include the Canada/U.S. copro iek, Astra Taylor’s look at the noted Slovenian philosopher, and Souvenir of Canada, a feature treatment of Douglas Coupland’s bestseller by director Robin Neinstein. Both will play in Reel to Reel while a third, the rock ‘n’ roll thinkpiece Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey by the three-director team of Sam Dunn, Scot McFadyen and Jessica Joy-Wise, has been picked up by the oddball program Midnight Madness.

The festival had previously announced that Water, Deepa Mehta’s conclusion to her elemental trilogy, will open the fest when it starts its 10-day run on Sept 8.