Five Canadian Favourites for National Canadian Film Day 2026

What makes a film Canadian?

Is Scott Pilgrim vs. the World a “Canadian” film? It’s shot in Toronto, set in Toronto, stars a Canadian actor as the title character, and is based on a series of graphic novels by a Canadian cartoonist. But the movie is not technically counted amongst the greats of Canadian cinema because the money behind it (and most of its talent) is from beyond our borders. Technically, the movie is an American-Japanese-British co-production, with nary a maple leaf in sight. Does money make a movie Canadian? 

The nature of Canada’s national cinema has been largely reliant on American influence and dominance, as can be said for much of our culture. While British Columbia might be the third-largest production hub for film and television in North America (following Los Angeles and New York City), very little of that is dedicated to primarily Canadian filmmaking. Instead, that economy is full of American-based productions, including many a CW show and possibly thousands of Hallmark films. Toronto and Montreal, Canada’s other major film hubs, fare no better either. When Canada does spawn a major filmmaker — I’m looking at you, James Cameron and Denis Villeneuve — they’re quickly swept up into the American ecosystem.

However, to call Canada’s national cinema non-existent would be entirely untrue. Although it skirts under the radar of most, Canada is home to a bountiful array of filmmakers and performers dedicated to making authentic cinema right here in the Great White North, even if many of our best and brightest end up moving to Hollywood. Recent endeavours like TV sensation Heated Rivalry and small-time box office hit Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie demonstrate that there is a market for uniquely Canadian stories on screen. Of course, most of this country’s homegrown cinema is largely thanks to the work of Indigenous and French Canadian filmmakers, whose unique cultural and linguistic perspectives make for fertile ground for a unique artistic environment. 

Today, April 15, 2026, marks the 13th annual National Canadian Film Day, a nationwide celebration of Canadian and Indigenous filmmaking hosted by Reel Canada. Independent cinemas, art museums, film societies, chain theatres, broadcasters, and streamers from Victoria to Iqaluit to St. John’s are presenting films and discussions highlighting the best of Canada’s cinematic art. This event is, if nothing else, an excuse for me to mention a few Canadian-made (truly Canadian-made; none of those “it was shot in Canada, I guess” movies are going to be here; sorry, Scott Pilgrim) movies that I have a particularly soft spot for.

If you’re looking for something Canadian to check out this National Canadian Film Day, here are a few of my personal favourites — grouped with no rhyme or reason beyond a broad sense of “Canadiana” — to get you started.

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Dead Ringers (1988)

“Poor Ellie. Poor Bev.”

Any list or article about Canadian cinema would be incomplete without mentioning David Cronenberg, the Toronto-born purveyor of the strange, unsettling, and macabre. In Dead Ringers, set in Toronto, Jeremy Irons plays identical twin gynecologists Elliot and Beverly Mantle, who begin to find themselves pulled into a twisted game of obsession, brought about when a woman enters their dynamic, threatening to tear their codependent relationship apart. Cronenberg, a member of the Order of Canada, is at the height of his powers here. The tale of twin obsession descends into a strange, elliptical tale of identity, hatred, and the subjugation of the female body to the mad toyings of science. Unsettling, disturbing, and revolving, Dead Ringers’ uncomfortable subject matter is made all the more vivid by Iron’s two-for-one knock-out performances as the cold and seemingly unfeeling Mantle twins. The film reflects Canada’s cold temperatures by being emotionally frigid.

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The Sweet Hereafter (1997)

“Well, enough rage and helplessness and your love turns to something else.”

It’s a cliché to include The Sweet Hereafter on a list of “favourite Canadian films,” but here I am anyway, proudly including it. However cliché it might be, the film is undoubtedly one of the most classic works in the canon of Canadian cinema, and it would be remiss of me not to include it here. Directed by Atom Egoyan, another inductee to the Order of Canada, the film is a devastating portrait of a rural British Columbia community in crisis, as they collectively work through a tragic and deadly school bus accident. The massive and potent ensemble is rooted in an incredible, subtle leading performance by the late Ian Holm, a lawyer who’s attempting to pull the town into a class-action lawsuit. It’s a beautiful, lyrical, and tragic film that digs deep into small-town relationships, deeply hidden internal demons, and the mystifying art of learning to live with tragedy. The Sweet Hereafter is hardly Egoyan’s only significant contribution to the catalogue of Canadian cinema, but it is certainly his most accessible, even in its dark and harrowing way.

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Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013)

“The day I found my mother died, I aged a thousand years.”

One of the greatest losses in recent Canadian artistic history is the death of Jeff Barnaby, the Mi’kmaq filmmaker who was quickly rising as one of the Great White North’s most stunning artistic voices. He did leave behind two incredible films, including Rhymes for Young Ghouls, his first film and my favourite of the two. Set in a fictional Mi'kmaq First Nations reserve in the 1970s, the film is a scrapy, low-budget, and impassioned revenge flick. It digs into the murky, uncomfortable, and all-too-recent Canadian history in a way that’s brutal and unflinching. The film gets points in more than just its historical relevance. Baranby employs excellent multi-media approaches to his filmmaking, weaving folktales with real-world trauma for a film that’s downright unforgettable.

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Universal Language (2024)

“Just as the Assiniboine joins the Red River and together they flow into Lake Winnipeg, we are all connected, Agha.”

Following up on The Twentieth Century, his weirdly expressionistic and surreal interpretation of the life of Canadian prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language wades back into familiarly weird territory. Set in the liminal space between Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Tehran, Iran — two cities united by a mutual love of brutalist architecture and not much else — the film follows a set of various tales, including a pair of children trying to get a note of money out of some ice, a man leading tours around the city of Winnepeg, and a fictionalized version of Rankin himself going to home to Winnipeg to visit his dying mother. Images that are daily realities in Canada are given a fresh set of paint, including a Tim Hortons that’s reimagined as a Persian tea shop. Rankin mixes influence from East and West, building a beautiful, multi-cultural, and unique understanding of what it means to be Canadian. It’s a bone-dry love letter to the Iranian cinema that formed Rankin as a young man, to the city of Winnipeg and Canadian culture, and the strange, amorphous place that Canada can be.

Universal Language was featured in my Favourite Films of 2024 list.

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Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie (2025)

“If you’ve got a best friend, you won’t even notice getting older.”

I sang the praises of Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie (the feature-length sequel to both a late 2000s webseries and a short-lived Viceland TV show with increasingly compounded titles) extensively just a few months ago when the film appeared in my year-end best-of list, but I’m not quite done talking bout it yet. Director Matt Johnson and co-creator and co-star Jay McCarrol have worked magic in this strange mockumentary/prank movie hybrid about middle-aged men and their unrealized dreams. It’s a never-ending barrage of incredibly constructed jokes and gags, including one incredible Mission: Impossible-esque stunt involving the CN Tower. Like the other films on this list, Nirvanna the Band is a beautiful work of distinctly Canadian art. While it’s not quite as obsessed with national identity as Universal Language, its collection of Canadian references and jokes makes it unapologetically belong to its country of origin. If you haven’t yet gotten around to this delight of a film, make this National Canadian Film Day your chance to change that.

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie was featured in my Favourite Films of 2025 list.