Writer-director Ian Harnarine’s feature Doubles (pictured) will open the Canadian Film Fest (CFF) in Toronto.

The drama is among 11 features and 45 shorts announced as part of the festival’s 2024 lineup. CFF has been extended to six days this year — running from March 18 to 23 — and features an expanded shorts program, according to a news release.

Doubles is produced by Mark Sirju. It centres on a Trinidadian street vendor who travels to Toronto and must decide if he will help save his estranged father from dying.

The film is based on Harnarine’s short Doubles with Slight Pepper, which won Best Canadian Short Film at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2011 and Best Live Action Short Drama at the 2012 Canadian Screen Awards. The film stars Sanjiv Boodhu and Errol Sitahal. Game Theory Films is the distributor.

Doubles had its world premiere last September at the Atlantic International Film Festival in Halifax, and will make its Toronto premiere at CFF.

Fourteen shorts are making their world bow at CFF, including 10 dramas. Among them are writer-director Michèle Kaye’s Nosocomephilia, produced by Tejasvi Bhalla, Jen Pogue, Laura Tremblay, Laura Nordin, Emily Andrews and Henry Sansom; writer-director-producer Cici Clancy’s Ephemera;  and writer-director Alice Wang’s Don’t Forget Me, produced by Kathlyn Rose Gardiner.

The short debuts also include Khastegari, directed and produced by Camil Ghajary, and written by Jila Mirzaei; writer-director Joanna Decc’s Bleak as the Setting Sun, produced by Decc, Ahlam Hassan and Philippe Corbin; and writer-director Salar Pashtoonyar’s Children of War, produced by Pashtoonyar and Soledad Vega, and executive produced by BadSon Pictures.

Rounding out the dramas are writer-director Ammar Keshodia’s Seance for a Close Friend, produced by Michael Ren; writer-director Julia Patey’s Mum, produced by Patey and Scumeck Sabottka and executive produced by MCT Agentur GmbH & EASYdoesit GmbH; I Never Promised You a Jasmine Garden, written and directed by Teyama Alkamli, produced by Alkamli and Luke Gallagher, and executive produced by Shehrezade Mian; and writer-director Lauren Grant’s Erase & Rewind, produced by Grant and Ashleigh Rains.

The other four world premiere shorts include the sci-fi dramedy Capsule; directed by Dani Kind and written by Mike Rinaldi, with Ben Robinson and Claire Desmarais producing and Kind, Susi Bolender, Tiffany N. D’Emidio, Jordan Kenna, Shiro Onedera and Alice M. Gilbert executive producing; and Victor Oly’s dramedy The Whipping Boy, written by Ben Milligan, produced by Natasha Advani Thangkhiew and executive produced by Oly.

Director Shervin Kermani’s comedy Bibi’s Dog is Dead, co-written by Kermani and Bryn McAuley, who also produce with Angela Silcock; and writer-director John Hollands’ historical fiction animation live-action hybrid Grenfell Adrift on an Iceberg, produced by Kenji Yukinaga-Paradis, complete the lineup of shorts making their world bow.

Photo courtesy of the Canadian Film Fest