Veteran directors at the top of their game, a brilliant new talent from the North, and an accomplished actor moving behind the camera lens: This decade has been an exciting one for Canadian film.
It's tough to pick favourites, but below are CTV.ca's top 10 films of the 2000s.
There are a couple box office smashes that didn't quite make it, including Paul Gross's Passchendaele. And maybe you really, really liked Bon Cop, Bad Cop. If you think we missed something, please include it in the comments.
And now, here we are, in descending order:
10. Ginger Snaps (2000)
Yeah, it's yet another horror film that uses monsters as an allegory for teenage hormones and angst. But rarely has it been done better. The film makes great use of the encroachment of urban sprawl on Canada's wilderness, and clueless, suburban parents who are almost as damaging as the werewolves. Be afraid.
9. FUBAR (2002)
Just imagine, all those intellectuals in the 1960s, fretting about Canadian identity and trying to see what made us tick. Yawn. If only we could build a time-machine and send them F.U.B.A.R., they would know the answer: Heavy metal, hockey, beer, roadside camping, mullets, and more beer.
8. C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005)
A young man comes to terms with his homosexuality in 1970s Quebec, when the province was immersed in Catholic and separatist ideals, while trying to stay close to his strict father. It's a tough life, but one beautifully told by director Jean-Marc Vallee, whose psychedelic imagery captures the era.
7. Water (2006)
In this final film from Deepa Mehta's Elements Trilogy, she continues her damning exploration of societal barriers in India. This time, she examines the lives of Hindu widows in the late 1930s. Under religious law they were forced to live in institutions, cut off from society like prisoners. Mehta struggled against fundamentalists to get the film made, and she makes every shot count.
6. Pontypool (2008)
The author Tony Burgess and director Bruce McDonald, critics' favourites but mainstream outlaws, team up like Butch and Sundance for this wonderfully weird zombie film. The action takes place in a tiny Ontario town's radio station, where a grizzled Stephen McHattie gets strange reports of violent activity. McDonald places heavy restrictions on himself: He uses few camera angles, mostly fixed in place, that boost the film's claustrophobia.
5. My Winnipeg (2007)
Guy Maddin always shoots through a filter of expressionistic films, Scandinavian imagery and a droll sense of humour to find the essence of life in Manitoba. In "My Winnipeg," he uses his bag of tricks to examine his own childhood, fusing his personal history with that of the city. The result is a hilarious, and mesmerizing, tribute to his hometown.
4. A History of Violence (2005)
A reformed criminal's dark past infects his present life, splitting apart his peaceful, small-town existence. It's a simple tale, but David Cronenberg takes the audience on a gripping ride of sharp-angle turns. And as the title implies, there's plenty of violence; it has such a sickening, visceral impact that even those desensitized by horror films will flinch.
3. The Barbarian Invasions / Les invasions barbares (2003)
It's Denys Arcand at his meditative best, tackling the Big Questions and revisiting the intellectuals from his 1986 comedy "Decline of the American Empire." At the heart of his film is the relationship between a dying history professor and his polar opposite: his finance-wizard son. This was a rare critical and commercial box office hit in Canada, and deservedly won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
2. Away from Her (2006)
For Sarah Polley's feature debut as a director, she chose a love story by Alice Munro, one of the greatest English-language writers on the planet -- or the greatest -- and cast the brilliant Gordon Pinsent and Julie Christie as a couple dealing with Alzheimer's disease. But her work behind the camera is equally impressive and it's a solid performance all around.
1. Atanarjuat (2001)
Early reviews declared Atanarjuat an "instant classic" -- a game of Russian roulette for critics. But at the other end of the decade, it rings true. The film brings alive an Inuit folk tale about the nature of evil, passed down through oral tradition for hundreds of years. Director Zacharias Kunuk tells the story with as much realism as possible, shooting everything in a documentary style, and letting the Arctic's sublime landscape speak for itself.
