TIFF 2015: Canadian films highlight festival, but will they make money?

More than one in five movies at this year's Toronto International Film Festival comefrom Canada, but that critical success doesn't always translate to big bucks at the box office.

Canadian movies have proven so popular at TIFF, that the festival has dropped its Canadian-themed program this year and instead let movies from this country stack up against others from the U.S. and around the world.

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"There's great writers and great filmmakers in this country but it's about bringing exposure and attention to them and that's what TIFF is,"said Timmins, Ont. actor Natalie Brown, who has worked consistently on screen since 1997 but never in a breakout role.

Brown said TIFF is crucial for emerging filmmakers, but many at the festival are also hoping the Canadian movies shown here start grossing more at the box office.

Last year, Wet Bum, a film that received funding from Telefilm Canada, the Ontario Media Development Corporation, the Rogers Telefund as well as federal and provincial tax credits, was lauded by critics. But while the overall budget wasn't revealed, its take at the box office was just a few thousanddollars.

Even seasoned veterans like Atom Egoyan don't bring in audiences anywhere near his American counterparts. Last year, Egoyan's film The Captive made slightly more than $1 million, good enough for ninth on a top 10 list of Canadian movies. In ninth place overall, Dawn of the Planets of the Apes,mademore than $20 million.

Egoyan said social media and negative reviews did The Captive in.

"People will create word of mouth, which is what happened with Captive. I go to Amazon Prime and I can see what someone posted two hours ago. There are people who love it. There are people who hate it," he said.

"What was shocking was critical response last year was just so uniformly negative. And that was just the result of this kind of gang mentality that's kind of the downside of a festival."

Egoyan said while filmmakers don't have much control over the reviews, if movies get a wide distribution there's still a tremendous opportunity.

A Canadian return

Director Patricia Rozema's first film, I've Heard the Mermaid Singing, won the Prix de la Jeunesseat Cannes when it was released in 1987. According to IMDB, it grossed $1.4 US million.

I don't have the answer on how to give Canadian films a fair crack because I don't think they're getting a fair crack yet. Something is amiss with the system- Patricia Rozema, director

This year, Rozema is back at TIFF with a new feature, her first since the 1990s. Into The Forest is an apocalyptic drama about two sisters, funded in part by Telefilm.

Rozema said she started without connections in the business and breaking into the "public relations and advertising machine" in Canada is tricky but worth it for the art of filmmaking.

"The funny thing is that American independents always look to Canada as this kind of holy land of loveliness and joy and state money for films because they often have to go to the deepest den of commercial distribution to get money,"she said.

"So they're forced to do their genre thing and we have the freedom to play, find our voice, and learn."

Something 'amiss with the system'

However, that system needs support, said actor Megan Follows, something that begins with Canadian audiences watching homegrown films.

Follows, who plays the role of Queen Catherine in Reign and was famously Anne of Green Gables, said she recently watched the National Film Board's Mon Oncle Antoine a French language film from 1971 at a retrospective at the TIFF Bell Lightbox and was blown away.

"It was incredible to sit in that theatre and watch a really beautiful piece of Canadian cinema and see our cultural heritage, history. And what a damn good film that was," she said.

To Follows, it's a seminal work of our national past, but she wonders how many Canadians have actually seen it, or care to.

"We make incredible films in this country but we need to support them which means our leaders need to play them or our television needs to show them. And I'm a big supporter of us showing Canadian content because it's good, not because we need to," Follows said.

Rozema agreed but said, "I don't have the answer on how to give Canadian films a fair crack because I don't think they're getting a fair crack yet. Something is amiss with the system."