From the sacred to the profane, there’s something to please most every film buff in the seventh annual Canada’s Top Ten, a selection of cinematic highlights of the year unveiled by thesps Wendy Crewson and Luke Kirby at an event organized by the Toronto International Film Festival Group on Tuesday night in Toronto.

As usual, most of the selected films unspooled at TIFF in September. The sole exception is Up The Yangtze!, a doc about China’s Three Gorges Dam coproduced by the National Film Board and directed by Yung Chang, which premiered at Vancouver. The picture, which is part of the upcoming Sundance lineup, will be released theatrically in February.

The rest were at Toronto, including TIFF opener Fugitive Pieces, directed by Jeremy Podeswa, and David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises, both of which involve producer Robert Lantos. Also on the list: Guy Maddin’s homage to his hometown, My Winnipeg; Martin Gero’s Young People Fucking (the aforementioned ‘profane’); Denys Arcand’s much-panned follow-up to Les Invasions barbares, L’ âge des ténèbres; Bruce McDonald’s experimental The Tracey Fragments; and Emmy-winner Peter Raymont’s A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman, which has been shortlisted for an Oscar nom in the feature-length doc category.

Rounding out the Top Ten are Amal, from Richie Mehta, and Continental, un film sans fusil, from Stéphane Lafleur, which took best Canadian first feature at TIFF.

This has been an exceptionally strong year for Canadian film, said TIFFG director of Canadian programming and outreach Cam Haynes. ‘Sometimes you wish there was room for five or six more,’ he said, ‘this year in particular.’ Haynes was on the selection panel alongside the likes of film critic Ken Eisner, producer Roger Frappier, filmmaker Daniel Roby and producer Shirley Vercruysse.

With a worldwide take of $40 million as of Dec. 5, Focus Features’ Eastern Promises is by far the most commercially successful of the bunch. But given that it’s an 80/20 copro, with the U.K. taking the larger share and Hollywood’s might behind it, is it really Canadian?

There are always ‘blurry lines,’ Haynes acknowledges, but Eastern Promises‘ Canadian pedigree wasn’t difficult to establish. The film has passed muster with the folks at CAVCO, and Cronenberg is, of course, one of ours, as is producer Lantos.

‘The film on all levels is a Canadian film,’ says Haynes.