The Toronto International Film Festival has revealed the selections for its Docs programme, with a handful of Canadian titles among the lineup.

The selection has 21 films in total, and includes docs from the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and CBC making their world premieres.

So Surreal: Behind the Masks (pictured) is directed by Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond and Joanne Robertson and produced by Daniel Morin of Rezolution Pictures. The doc explores the history of Indigenous masks and follows a quest to return a stolen mask from the Kwakwaka’wakw peoples of the pacific northwest.

Executive producers on the feature are Rezolution’s Catherine Bainbridge and Ernest Webb. The doc will make its broadcast premiere on CBC’s documentary Channel.

English- and French-language doc Living Together is written and directed by Halima Elkhatabi and produced by the NFB’s Nathalie Cloutier, who is also an EP on the film. The feature documents conversations between young people in Montreal looking for a room to rent.

Another Canadian doc making its world premiere is Ali Weinstein’s Your Tomorrow. The film is in English, Somali, Portuguese and Chinese. It follows the final year of Ontario Place and the citizens trying to save it from redevelopment.

Making its North American premiere is Anastasia Trofimova’s Canada/France copro Russians at War (Raja Pictures, Films à Cinq), and shows the director behind Russian borders during the war with Ukraine.

Russians at War is produced by Cornelia Principe, Sally Blake and Philippe Levasseu, in association with TVO, Arte France and Knowledge Network. It was selected to world premiere at the Venice Film Festival.

Other films making their world premiere in TIFF’s Docs programme include the U.S. doc Men at War, co-directed by Ontario-born filmmaker Jen Gatien alongside Billy Corben, as well as Vice is Broke from Eddie Huang (U.S.) and U.K/Ireland doc Blue Road – The Edna O’Brien Story from Sinéad O’Shea.

TIFF runs from Sept. 5 to 15.

Image courtesy of TIFF