Amidst a surge of homegrown pride from coast-to-coast, National Canadian Film Day has seen a 50% increase in year-over-year partner registrations.

Reel Canada, the organizers behind the day’s events, expect free screenings on April 16 to exceed 2,000 for 2025. Reel Canada executive director Jack Blum (pictured left) told Playback Daily last year’s screenings totaled more than 1,700.

Several partners are expanding their programming to last the week, including the Vancouver International Film Festival, which will screen 18 features. Also included in Canadian Film Week is the Yukon Film Society in Whitehorse, which will screen 11 films, while London, Ont.’s Aeolian Hall will host eight screenings.

“Canadians are asking a lot of questions about who we are and what we value and what makes us Canadian,” says Blum. “There’s this supercharged dialogue that’s going on about what happens in the grocery store, and some of that is spilling over to what happens on your TV screen and in your theaters.”

This year’s theme is “Something to Believe In,” with 60 films chosen as part of a spotlight selection broken down into five themes: big dreams, community and family, fighting for your beliefs, the power of art and resilience.

“There were some surprise twists nobody expected,” said Reel Canada artistic director Sharon Corder (pictured right) of the connections between the films and themes of the current political moment. “It turns out that a lot of things speak to the moment anyway, like in Toronto, we’ve got Inside Out [Film and Video Festival] doing Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story. So that’s political in this moment.”

Films that are part of the spotlight series include newer films such as Sophie Deraspe’s Shepherds (micro_scope, Avenue B Productions), Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language (Metafilms), as well as Michael Toledano, Jennifer Wickham and Brenda Michell’s Yintah (Yintah Film). The series also includes several anniversary screenings, including Clement Virgo’s 1995 film Rude.

The 12th annual celebration will also feature the Canadian premiere of Black Fawn Films’ It Feeds at more than 20 cinemas across the country. Writer-director Chad Archibald’s horror film follows a father attempting to save his daughter from a malevolent entity. The film stars Shawn Ashmore, Ashley Greene, Ellie O’Brien, Shayelin Martin, Julian Richings, Juno Rinaldi and Mark
Taylor.

The National Screen Institute (NSI) will world premiere Dabi Anele’s short The Difference Between Us, which was made as part of an NSI training programme for refugees and newcomers in Manitoba.

The day will also feature preview screenings, including Vortex Media’s comedy Please, After You in Mississauga, Ont.; an online screening of Toronto-based Gambade Films’ documentary Doors of War in partnership with the Canada-Ukraine Foundation; and Sarah Galea-Davis’ The Players (Hawkeye Pictures) in Hamilton, Ont.

“Distributors are starting to look at the day as a good launching pad. That started to build last year, and it’s clearly building further this year,” says Blum.

More than 50 film festivals are participating in the day, along with more than 70 Indigenous-made films scheduled and more than 200 French-language screenings. As well, nearly 100 Canadian films will be screened in 43 countries around the world, such as Sook Yin-Lee’s Paying For It (Wildling Pictures, Hawkeye Pictures) at Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema, and 11 screenings across eight cities in France.

A performance of the national anthem sung by Jann Arden will precede every screening.

The day will also feature a town hall-style event at Toronto’s Scotiabank Theatre with actor and director Yannick Bisson, director Don McKellar, comedian Mary Walsh as well as filmmaker and actor Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers. Hosted by comedian and actor Ali Hassan, the panelists will discuss the impact Canadian films have had on them.

An estimated 15,000 students across 350 high schools will also listen in on a livestream conversation with creators of the CBC series North of North Anna Lambe, Alethea Arnaquq-Baril and Stacey Aglok MacDonald hosted by former executive and artistic director of imagineNATIVE, Jason Ryle.

Broadcasters and streamers including Netflix, CBC, Prime Video, YouTube and much more will have Canadian screen content available to watch that day as well, with Blum and Corder expecting more than two million to tune in via their TVs or screens.

Both Blum and Corder acknowledge they could not have predicted the urgency of this year’s theme.

“I think that that’s the core value, to say ‘What is the point of our stories?’ says Corder. “Why do we need our stories anyway? And this is why … It’s more urgent, it’s more important to remember.”

Images courtesy of Reel Canada