TIFF names top ten features and shorts

Pictured: Denis Côté’s Curling.

They’ll always have Toronto: From Xavier Dolan’s Les amours imaginaires and Denis Côté’s Curling to Vincenzo Natali’s Splice and Bruce McDonald’s Trigger, Canadian filmmakers did well on the festival circuit in 2010.

And the best among them as they go in search of boxoffice success can be found on the Toronto International Film Festival’s top ten Canadian features and top ten best shorts of 2010, whose lists were revealed Tuesday.

Besides the latest films by Dolan, Côté, Natali and McDonald, TIFF favorites for 2010 include Richard J. Lewis’ Barney’s Version; The High Cost of Living, a debut feature from Deborah Chow; Lixin Fan’s Last Train Home; MODRA, by Ingrid Veninger; Incendies from Denis Villeneuve; and another Toronto favorite, Catherine Martin with Trois temps après la mort d’Anna.

And the top ten shorts for 2010 includes Kaveh Nabatian’s Vapor; Tao Gu’s On the Way to the Sea; Mokhtar, by Halima Ouardiri; Greg Atkins’ Above the Knee; and Vincent Biron’s Les fleurs de l’age, a film about kids on a summer day that grabbed the best Canadian short at TIFF’s 2010 edition.

Rounding out TIFF’s top ten shorts is I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors, by festival favorite Ann Marie Fleming; Jerome Sable’s The Legend of Beaver Dam; The Little White Cloud That Cried, the latest film by Guy Maddin; Theodore Ushey’s Lipsett Diaries; and Marius Borodine, from director Emanuel Hoss-Desmarais.

“The 2010 lineup showcases an eclectic mix of films that represents the wide range of cinematic productions in our country,” Steve Gravestock, associate director of Canadian Programming at TIFF, said Tuesday.