The Canadian Film Fest is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to supporting Canadian independent films and cultivating emerging and established filmmaking talent. Film-loving audiences come to enjoy a diverse selection of 100% Canadian film screenings (features & shorts) and filmmakers flock to the CFF’s various industry events to take advantage of essential networking opportunities. CFF’s mission is to celebrate the art of cinematic storytelling by showcasing Canadian films and filmmakers. By exclusively featuring Canadian films, its goal is to provide filmmakers with valuable showcasing and networking opportunities and to offer the public homegrown productions to view and enjoy. In addition to film screenings the CFF presents the CFF Industry Series with industry panelists, masterclasses, a screenplay competition witha cash prize and of course awesome parties.

Beginning Thursday, April 1 and running for three consecutive weekends, nine feature films will premiere on Super Channel Fuse on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT. All festival feature films will have a linear only limited run, so viewers are encouraged to catch them while they can and experience them festival-style during their linear broadcast. In addition, 30 short films from the CFF will be interspersed into the schedule around the feature film presentations for viewers to enjoy as part of the film festival experience.

The Canadian Film Fest presented by Super Channel will immerse viewers in a virtual festival experience complete with pre-recorded and live Q&As with filmmakers, access to industry programs online (panel discussions, masterclass), and a virtual awards presentation.

“As we come into the 15th anniversary of the Festival, I’m excited to share this programming across Canada together with Super Channel. With such a strong selection of captivating Canadian stories to present this year, including seven World Premieres and four Canadian Premieres, we have plenty of Canada to celebrate,” said Ashleigh Rains, Festival Director, Canadian Film Fest.

The Canadian Film Fest presented by Super Channel will kick off on April 1 with the Toronto premiere of Sugar Daddy (dir. Wendy Morgan), starring Kelly McCormack (Letterkenny, A Simple Favour) and Colm Feore (The Umbrella Academy, Sensitive Skin, The Borgias), which follows a young talented musician who signs up to a paid dating website which takes her down a dark path – and her music along with it. Closing out the festival on April 17, will be Range Roads (dir. Kyle Thomas) making its Canadian premiere. Starring Alana Hawley-Purvis (The Great Fear) and Joe Perry (Everfall, Blood Mountain), this poignant film is an intimate story of grief, longing, and forgiveness, that explores the painful and beautiful complexities of what it means to be a family.

Other feature film highlights include the Toronto Premieres of White Elephant (dir. Andrew Chung), in 1990s Scarborough a teenaged girl is torn between a crush and her friends, and her quest for love becomes a question of self-love; Chained (dir. Titus Heckel), a crime thriller where a young boy’s discovery of a criminal imprisoned in an abandoned warehouse puts both their lives in danger; Between Waves (dir. Virginia Abramovich), a sci-fi tale of a woman straddling a fine line between enlightenment and madness when her presumed-dead quantum physicist lover who pleads for her to join him in a parallel plane; The Corruption of Divine Providence (dir. Jeremy Torrie), which focuses on the mysterious disappearance and reappearance of a teenaged Métis girl in a small northern town; Events Transpiring Before, During, and After a High School Basketball Game (dir. Ted Stenson), a comedy set in 1999 centred on a boys basketball team preparing for the most low-stakes game of their lives;  The Last Villains, Mad Dog & The Butcher (dir. Thomas Rinfret), the larger-than-life story of the legendary Vachon family of pro wrestlers.

The Festival also presents the Canadian Premiere of Woman in Car (dir. Vanya Rose), starring Hélène Joy (Murdoch Mysteries, Durham County) as a woman who struggles to keep her secrets hidden, in a story that explores issues of class, family, desire, and deception.

A complete listing of scheduled festival features follows below.

The 30 new CFF short films which will be showcased in the festival include the World Premieres of The Kall (dir. Barbara Mamabolo), which tells the story of an anxious young woman who searches for answers when the dead come knocking on her door; The First Goodbye (dir. Ali Mashayekhi), a sci-fi story of a widow’s obsession that transcends time and space; Sister Sekhmet (dir. Isa Benn-Moja), a documentary about a young woman struggling to find inner peace during the COVID pandemic; The World to Come (dir. Josh Fagen), focused on a family who must come to terms with a recent loss in the face of a strange apparition; comedy Breakout (dir. Kevin Hartford), about a young woman perpetually on the verge of breaking into song and dance who meets her new roommates for the first time; and With Feeling (dir. Gillian McKercher), about the reunion of an estranged couple trapped by unexpected weather. Other shorts include the Canadian Premieres of 1978 (dir. Hamza Bangash), following a rockstar from Pakistan’s Christian community who is offered the chance to reinvent himself as a State-sanctioned singer; and documentary Of Memory and Debris (dir. Rodrigo Michelangeli), an intimate portrait of the director’s grandparents, who remained in Venezuela after the majority of their families fled from the political and economic crisis.

 

Click here for information on how to watch via Super Channel, Amazon Prime, or Apple TV.

Click here for a full schedule of films screening and times.

About the Author

Bryen Dunn is a freelance journalist with a focus on travel, lifestyle, entertainment and hospitality. He has an extensive portfolio of celebrity interviews with musicians, actors and other public personalities. He enjoys discovering delicious eats, tasting spirited treats, and being mesmerized by musical beats.