TIFF releases top 10 festival features of 2013

The Toronto International Film Festival on Tuesday night announced its favourite festival films of 2013, including the latest work from Denis Villeneuve, Louise Archambault and Michael Dowse.

This year’s crop of critical picks to screen over 10 days in January were unveiled Tuesday night in Toronto and include a host of titles that bowed at TIFF.

Those includes Dowse’s The F Word, Villeneuve’s Enemy, Louise Archambault’s Gabrielle, Sarah prefere la course, by Chloé Robichaud, and Jeff Barnaby’s Rhymes for Young Ghouls.

Other TIFF titles getting a double-shot include Xavier Dolan’s Tom a la ferme, Watermark, by Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky, Shayne Ehman and Seth Scriver’s Asphalt Watches, Toronto’s best Canadian first feature award winner, and Alan Zweig’s When Jews Were Funny, which was named best Canadian feature film at TIFF’s 2013 edition.

Also making the Toronto festival list is Denis Cote’s Vic et Flo ont vu un, which bowed in Berlin, Monia Chokri’s An Extraordinary Person, The Chaperone 3D, by Fraser Munden and Neil Rathbone, and Claire Blanchet’s The End of Pinky, a pencil and pastel animated film also in stereoscopic 3D.

The top-ten short films to screen this year at festivals includes Johnny Ma’s A Grand Canal, Walter Woodman and Patrick Cederberg’s Noah, which won for best Canadian short at TIFF 2013, Chris Landreth’s Subconscious Password, and In Guns We Trust, by Nicolas Levesque.

The 20 Canadian films are to screen at Bell Lightbox from Jan. 3 to 12, 2014, with introductions and Q&A sessions with the filmmakers.