Canada’s Oscar submission for best international feature, Drunken Birds, and festival hits Scarborough and Night Raiders are among the titles on TIFF’s list of the best Canadian films of 2021.

The organization behind the Toronto International Film Festival unveiled on Monday (Dec. 6) its 20th annual Canada’s Top Ten list of features and shorts, compiled by TIFF programmers in collaboration with film experts.

The list of features is varied with eight first appearances and five Indigenous filmmakers. Seven of the features are from Ontario, two hail from Quebec and one is from Manitoba.

Eight of the 10 shorts are directed or co-directed by women, and six of the shorts’ directors are alumni from the TIFF Talent Development programs Filmmaker Lab, Writers’ Studio, and Telefilm Canada’s Pitch This.

“Not since its inaugural year in 2001 have there been so many first appearances among the feature-film selections,” Cameron Bailey, who was promoted to CEO of TIFF last week, said in a news release.

The list of features, a selection of which will screen at TIFF Bell Lightbox or on digital TIFF Bell Lightbox in the coming weeks, includes Drunken Birds (pictured), directed and co-written by Montreal’s Ivan Grbovic (micro_scope), which recently scored distribution south of the border; TIFF 2021 People’s Choice Award first runner-up Scarborough (Compy Films), directed and produced by Toronto’s Shasha Nakhai and Rich Williamson, based on Toronto author/screenwriter Catherine Hernandez’s 2017 novel; and Night Raiders (Alcina Pictures), directed and written by Saskatchewan-raised, Cree-Métis filmmaker Danis Goulet, which won the 2021 TIFF Tribute Emerging Talent Award.

Also making the cut was Ste. Anne (Exovedate Productions), directed and produced by Manitoba-based Métis filmmaker Rhayne Vermette; All My Puny Sorrows, directed, written and co-produced by Toronto-raised Michael McGowan, based on Canadian author Miriam Toews’ 2014 novel (Mulmur Feed Co./Sugar Shack Productions/Carousel Pictures); and Charlotte, directed by Eric Warin and Tahir Rana (January Films, Walking The Dog and Les Productions Balthazar).

The list of features is rounded out by: Learn To Swim, directed and co-written by Thyrone Tommy (Leilani Films); Maria Chapdelaine, directed and written by Sébastien Pilote (Item 7/Multiplix Management); Subjects of Desire, written, directed and produced by Jennifer Holness (Hungry Eyes Media); and The White Fortress, written and directed by Igor Drljača, which is the 2022 Oscar submission from Bosnia and Herzegovina for best international film (Timelapse Pictures with SCCA/pro.ba, in association with Gearshift Films).

The shorts lineup, which will screen at TIFF Bell Lightbox in a program format on Jan. 22, 2022, includes TIFF 2021 award winners Angakusajaujuq – The Shaman’s Apprentice by Zacharias Kunuk (Nunavut/Ontario) and Honour to Senator Murray Sinclair, directed by Alanis Obomsawin (Québec).

Other Ontario selections include Together, directed by Albert Shin; The Syed Family Xmas Eve Game Night, directed by Fawzia Mirza; and DEFUND, directed by Khadijah Roberts-Abdullah and Araya Mengesha.

The other Quebec shorts on the list are: Ain’t No Time for Women, directed by Sarra El Abed; Meneath: The Hidden Island of Ethics, directed by Terril Calder; Boobs, directed by Marie Valade; Fanmi, directed by Sandrine Brodeur-Desrosiers and Carmine Pierre-Dufour; and Les grandes claques, directed by Annie St-Pierre.