Documentaries get the shaft once again from Canada’s Top Ten. The annual list, compiled by the Toronto International Film Festival in consultation with programmers from other festivals from the circuit, features only one documentary on its list of standout 2025 Canadian features: Agatha’s Almanac, directed by Amalie Atkins. The film observes nonagenarian Agatha Bock as she tends to her beloved garden. Agatha’s Almanac represents one of the more aesthetically ambitious selections of the Canada’s Top Ten line-up. It also marks the lone feature on the list that didn’t screen at the TIFF in September. The film premiered at CPH:DOX and had its North American premiere at Hot Docs where it won Best Canadian Feature. It also screened at festivals including VIFF, Windsor, and RIDM.
However much Agatha’s Almanac deserves the spot on Canada’s Top Ten, as do fellow selections Blue Heron and Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, which both have elements of non-fiction, this year marks the third year in a row with a lone documentary in the national spotlight. I’m repeating myself at this point, as I stated writing this article last year, but Canada’s Top Ten has a documentary problem that just won’t go away.
On the shorts side, however, Canada’s Top Ten includes a great documentary in Martin Edralin’s La Mayordomía, which observes families in Mexico City as they compete to host a figurine of Jesus Christ. Meanwhile, Lloyd Wong, Unfinished by Lesley Loksi Chan brings an experimental biography—and Berlinale prizewinner—to Canada’s Top Ten, while Caroline Monnet’s Pidikwe adds a unique celebration of women in music and live performance. Meanwhile, A Soft Touch by Heather Young and Ramón Who Speaks to Ghosts by Shervin Kermani flirt with the line between fiction and non-fiction. The shorts once again do the heavy lifting on the documentary front.
Going back to the feature side, though, the most surprising omission is arguably Endless Cookie from brothers Seth Scriver and Pete Scriver. This kooky film about two half-brothers—one white, one Indigenous—seems to check all the boxes that TIFF’s list makers could want: a film that builds something new formally while both celebrating and interrogating the offbeat process of bringing Canadian stories to screen. The only reason for its omission that one can deduce from the line-up is that Kid Koala’s Space Cadet had bigger champions and the list-makers felt that one animated film was enough to represent the field.
Endless Cookie is simply among the most widely celebrated Canadian films of the year overall. It debuted in competition at Sundance and went on to win the Rogers Canadian Audience Award at Hot Docs. It also won Best Animated Film from the Toronto Film Critics Association last month and is one of three nominees for the TFCA’s Rogers Best Canadian Documentary award from the group. Fellow nominees Ghosts of the Sea, directed by Virginia Tangvald, and Who Killed the Montreal Expos?, directed by Jean-François, could have easily earned spots on this list. (Agatha’s Almanac will be eligible for the group’s prize next year due to release dates.) Both titles are freely available on NFB.ca and CBC Gem, respectively, which may account for their omission from this list as Canada’s Top Ten generally rolls out the selections across the film circuit. Notably, only one film on the list, Zacharias Kunuk’s Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband) opened in any format in 2025.
Additionally, Endless Cookie enjoyed a respectably theatrical run in Canadian theatres this summer and opened in the USA in December. Those theatrical runs are significant when barely ten Canadian documentaries had theatrical releases in Toronto beyond single-event screenings. Spotlighting documentaries on Canada’s Top Ten could be an essential marketing tool when docs, especially Canadian ones, struggle at the box office more than ever.
Ironically, the box office success story on the Canadian front for 2025 is Barry Avrich’s The Road Between Us. The film earned $51,000 on its opening weekend in October after winning the People’s Choice Award winner for Documentary at TIFF. $50K might sound small compared to, say, A Minecraft Movie’s record-setting $162 million debut, but those numbers are great for a Canadian film. Doubly so for a documentary, although TIFF inevitably/understandably wouldn’t have wanted to reignite the controversy it faced with the film in the fall. Moreover, the consultants from festivals including RIDM, Windsor, Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton likely didn’t go to bat for the film since they didn’t do so with their own events.
Other docs that could have earned a spot on the list are Ally Pankiw’s conventional, if absolutely electric, music film Lilith Fair and Peter Mettler’s gargantuan, if completely absorbing, While the Green Grass Grows. Both films demand the theatrical experience, but the former went straight to CBC Gem in September and the latter will inevitably struggle for theatrical space outside the circuit as a seven-hour opus. In fairness, TIFF did spotlight Mettler’s film already in a retrospective in October.
Those films are easy standouts, but this year’s Canada’s Top Ten list includes some off-the-beaten path dramas including the Quebecois comedy Follies by Eric K. Boulianne (one of two films on the list that I haven’t seen) and the Indigenous genre film Sk+te’kmujue’katik (At the Place of Ghosts), which makes good on the glaring omission of Bretten Hannam’s Wildhood a few years ago.
But even then, there surely could have been room for documentaries like Min Sook Lee’s There Are No Words, Matt Gallagher’s Shamed, Patrick Shannon’s Saints and Warriors, Julien Elie’s Shifting Baselines, Noam Gonick’s Parade: Queer Acts of Love and Resistance, or Jamal Burger and Jukan Tateisi’s Still Single, which all had respectable festival runs and were often singled out as programming highlights and won prizes at festivals both Canadian and international. Still Single may have been in an odd place as Tateisi isn’t Canadian, but Canada’s Top Ten seemingly extends flexibility to dramatic selections The Things You Kill and Tuner, from directors Alireza Khatami and Daniel Roher, respectively. Both films have a healthy percentage of international financing that often puts Canada second in the country credits. But at least they’re dramas.
Here are the Canada’s Top Ten Picks for 2025
Canada’s Top Ten Feature Films
Sk+te’kmujue’katik (At the Place of Ghosts) | dir. Bretten Hannam | English, Mi’kmaw, French
Agatha’s Almanac | dir. Amalie Atkins | English
Blue Heron | dir. Sophy Romvari | English, Hungarian
Follies | dir. Eric K. Boulianne | French
Mile End Kicks | dir. Chandler Levack | English
Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie | dir. Matt Johnson | English
Space Cadet | dir. Kid Koala | no dialogue
The Things You Kill | dir. Alireza Khatami | Turkish
Tuner | dir. Daniel Roher | English
Uiksaringitara (Wrong Husband) | dir. Zacharias Kunuk | Inuktitut
Canada’s Top Ten Short Films
A Soft Touch | dir. Heather Young | 20 minutes | English
Ambush | dir. Yassmina Karajah | 21 minutes | Arabic
Jazz Infernal | dir. Will Niava | 16 minutes | French
Klee | dir. Gavin Baird | 20 minutes | English
La Mayordomía | dir. Martin Edralin | 23 minutes | Spanish
Lloyd Wong, Unfinished | dir. Lesley Loksi Chan | 29 minutes | English
Pidikwe | dir. Caroline Monnet | 10 minutes | no dialogue
Ramón Who Speaks to Ghosts | dir. Shervin Kermani | 8 minutes | Spanish
ripe | dir. Solara Thanh Bình Đặng | 19 minutes | Vietnamese
The Girl Who Cried Pearls | dirs. Chris Lavis, Maciek Szczerbowski | 17 minutes | English, French
