Niv Fichman

Two mismatched entrepreneurs – egghead innovator Mike Lazaridis and cut-throat businessman Jim Balsillie – joined forces in an endeavour that was to become a worldwide hit in little more than a decade. The story of the meteoric rise and catastrophic demise of the world's first smartphone.

Tasya Vos, an elite corporate assassin, uses brain-implant technology to take control of other people’s bodies to terminate high profile targets. As she sinks deeper into her latest assignment, Vos becomes trapped inside a mind that threatens to obliterate her.

Following the death of her mother, a young woman returns home to Niagara Falls and becomes entangled in the memory of a kidnapping she claims to have witnessed as a child.

A father faces a personal crisis when he discovers his estranged son fleeing a botched drug deal. The two men embark on a violent odyssey that grapples with themes of fatherhood, family and fate.

In 1843, despite the fact that Dickens is a successful writer, the failure of his latest book puts his career at a crossroads, until the moment when, struggling with inspiration and confronting reality with his childhood memories, a new character is born in the depths of his troubled mind; an old, lonely, embittered man, so vivid, so human, that a whole world grows around him, a story so inspiring that changed the meaning of Christmas forever.

A creative and driven teenager is desperate to escape his hometown and the haunting memories of his turbulent childhood.

In the not too distant future, two young women who live in a remote ancient forest discover the world around them is on the brink of an apocalypse. Informed only by rumor, they fight intruders, disease, loneliness & starvation.

From Adolphe Sax’s workshop to the legendary times of jazz and bebop, conquering the classical music stages, forbidden by Nazis and Communists and banned by the Pope: in its 170-year history the saxophone has always been the most seductive as well as the most feared musical instrument. Award-winning Canadian filmmaker Larry Weinstein illuminates and mythologizes the story of the saxophone, its most legendary players and its allegedly longstanding curse about saxophonists falling prey to the instrument’s dark powers.

Three different men, three different worlds, three different wars – all stand at the intersection of modern warfare – a murky world of fluid morality where all is not as it seems.

Guided by the spirit of “The Cuadecuc Manifesto” (coined by co-director Evan Johnson and inspired by Pere Portabella’s 1970 experimental cult documentary, Cuadecuc, vampir), Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton is a strange, stirring behind-the-scenes look at Paul Gross’s new feature, Hyena Road. Shot on location at CFB Shilo near Brandon, Manitoba, and in Aqaba, Jordan, the film mixes deep contrast black-and-white expressionism with wry and raw western revisionism reminiscent of Sam Peckinpah, as it summons unwieldy, psychedelic energy from the main event. [TIFF]

A multi-dimensional interface between a comic book artist, a novelist, and a film director. Each lives in a separate reality but authors a story about one of the others.

The cast and crew of 'Enemy' guide the audience through the making of the film and the possible meanings behind its enigmatic imagery.

A mild-mannered college professor discovers a look-alike actor and delves into the other man's private affairs.

Syd March is an employee at a clinic that sells injections of live viruses harvested from sick celebrities to obsessed fans. When he becomes infected with the disease that kills super sensation Hannah Geist, Syd becomes a target for collectors and rabid fans. He must unravel the mystery surrounding her death before he suffers the same fate.

A behind-the-scenes documentary about Jason Eisener's grindhouse exploitation film Hobo with a Shotgun.

A vigilante homeless man pulls into a new city and finds himself trapped in urban chaos, a city where crime rules and where the city's crime boss reigns. Seeing an urban landscape filled with armed robbers, corrupt cops, abused prostitutes and even a pedophile Santa, the Hobo goes about bringing justice to the city the best way he knows how - with a 20-gauge shotgun. Mayhem ensues when he tries to make things better for the future generation. Street justice will indeed prevail.

American gunslinger Sean Rafferty—aka The Montana Kid—is unable to find someone to duel in a Canadian town where no one understands the brutal code of the American Wild West.

Sergeant Michael Dunne fights in the 10th Battalion, AKA The "Fighting Tenth" with the 1st Canadian Division and participated in all major Canadian battles of the war, and set the record for highest number of individual bravery awards for a single battle

A documentary portrait of Chinese pianist Yundi Li that captures the poetic intensity of this young virtuoso as he works with the great Maestro Seiji Ozawa to prepare for his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. This is interwoven with Yundi on tour in his home country, where we meet his family, gain insight into his upbringing and are exposed to the massive scale of piano culture in China.

When a sudden plague of blindness devastates a city, a small group of the afflicted band together to triumphantly overcome the horrific conditions of their imposed quarantine.

When a sudden plague of blindness devastates a city, a small group of the afflicted band together to triumphantly overcome the horrific conditions of their imposed quarantine.

Based on the best-selling novel by Alessandro Baricco, this visually stunning film tells the story of a French trader who finds unexpected love far away from home.

A tribute to Isabella Rossellini's father

A drama focused on the friendship between a high-functioning autistic woman and a man who is traumatized after a fatal car accident.

An experimental filmmaker takes a job as a driver for a foul-mouthed child actor and his ambitious stage mother.

An experimental filmmaker takes a job as a driver for a foul-mouthed child actor and his ambitious stage mother.

After she ends up in prison and loses custody of her son, a woman struggles to assimilate outside her former life and remain clean long enough to regain custody of her son.

Sailors in repose on an island paradise seemingly have no worries of war or danger — until a playful gesture is interpreted as an act of wilful aggression. Soon, the innocent act of slight slapping becomes a relentless and unforgiving orgy of open-palmed face-smacking.

In Depression-era Winnipeg, a legless beer baroness hosts a contest for the saddest music in the world, offering a grand prize of $25,000.

Some of today's most original recording artists perform the work of famed composer Harold Arlen.

RAVEL'S BRAIN is a musical/visual tone poem at once tragic and celebratory in its mood. The film portrays the inner being of a great artist who was rendered incapable of communicating with the outside world. For the last five years of his life, Maurice Ravel was the victim of his own lamentable circumstances. Afflicted by aphasia and apraxia, his brain produced music, but he was unable to write it down.

A festival is a concentration of hope. Audiences hungering for something startingly new, famously familiar or just plain "good". Actors hoping their well-conceived sincerity and ritual entrances have that special glow. Press and critics poised to love or hate lucidly. And proud, desperate filmmakers looking for that little blessing on their latest self-projection. All squeezing together for a few days, in a few rooms wondering whether this will truly be the perfect place at the perfect time. Of course, it rarely is. Mostly it's just a collection of almosts. Delicious, shared almosts.

Pure fantasia, a race to save the world from a fatal heart attack, juxtaposed against a love rivalry between two brothers - a mortician and an actor playing Christ - for the heart of a scientist studying the earth's core.

While a veteran actor laments the state of film and film acting, a group of young children sneak a Panavision camera into the apartment where the actor resides and decide to make a film with it.

Various citizens of Toronto anxiously await the end of the world, which is occurring at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Day.

300 years of a remarkable musical instrument. Crafted by the Italian master Bussotti (Cecchi) in 1681, the red violin has traveled through Austria, England, China, and Canada, leaving both beauty and tragedy in its wake. In Montreal, Samuel L Jackson plays an appraiser going over its complex history.

THE SOUND OF THE CARCERI explores the deep relationship between music and architecture through a high-tech 'virtual confrontation' between Bach and his contemporary, the architect Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Using a striking visual style, director Francois Girard ('The Red Violin' and 'Thirty-Two Short Films about Glenn Gould') places Yo-Yo Ma within a series of computer-generated, three-dimensional recreations of Piranesi's well-known prison etchings. Through Yo-Yo Ma's and music producer Steven Epstein's struggle to recreate and interact with the imaginary space that Ma performs in, the film examines the complexity of illusion, of representation and reality.

The Music Garden is an exploration of music as interpreted through gardening on a grand scale. The film follows the efforts of Yo-Yo Ma and landscape designer Julie Moir Messervy to create a formal garden, based on J. S. Bach's 'Suite No. 1 for Unaccompanied Cello', in the center of Boston. Woven throughout this unusual enterprise is a performance of the suite by Yo-Yo Ma, accompanied by special effects that bring the dream of the garden to life.

Renowned cello virtuoso Yo-Yo Ma embarks on an intense year long collaboration with choreographer Mark Morris, which culminates in a spectacular performance.

The film explores the relationships that a limousine driver, a doctor, and a real estate agent have amongst each other and with Yo-Yo Ma as he travels to Canada to perform Bach's Cello Suites.

The remaining members of a once-great American family succumb to addictions, selfishness and disease.

As the waters of the river Seine overflow their banks and surround a Parisian café, composer Erik Satie nurtures bittersweet memories of his one-time lover Suzanne Valadon.

A collection of vignettes highlighting different aspects of the life, work, and character of the acclaimed Canadian classical pianist.

A photographer and his wife travel across Armenia photographing churches for a calendar project. Travelling with them is a local man acting as their driver and guide. As the project nears completion, the distance between husband and wife grows.

Satellite dish salesman Gus (Stephen Ouimette) experiences some life-altering changes when he meets performance artist Lucy (Christie MacFadyen) in this visually poetic fantasy. After Lucy vanishes, leaving a puzzling note, Gus goes on a quest for the mysterious woman. Moving from his meticulous life in a technologically advanced world into the spontaneity of nature, Gus learns some important lessons and begins to trust his own instincts.

Brilliant portrait of the composer's elusive life with a huge array of his greatest works. "This sumptuously beautiful documentary... combines rare film of the composer, interviews with people who knew him, and spectacular performances of his music... Rich production values, exhaustive examination, adoring in its representations of his work." - The Montreal Gazette