Feature Films Directed by Canadian Women

In recent decades, feature films directed by Canadian women have taken their place on the world stage. The following selection includes dramas and documentaries from a variety of regions of Canada -- films that are by turns fascinating, funny, frightening, classic, nostalgic, tragic, daring and inspiring -- by women with diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. 

22 January - Bye Bye Blues

Anne Wheeler, Alberta/British Columbia, 1989, 116 minutes

Anne Wheeler presents a moving story of a prairie doctor's wife (Rebecca Jenkins) who makes her living as a singer while awaiting her husband's return from a Japanese POW camp. The sound-track, featuring Jenkins' wonderful bluesy voice, complements the powerful theme of loyalty under difficult circumstances. 

29 January - Fire

Deepa Mehta, Ontario/India, 1997, 104 minutes

Mehta (Hollywood/Bollywood, Sam & Me) made the first film in India's cinematic history that openly deals with lesbian relations. Fire is a tender and illuminating story of two women struggling against suffocating traditions. 

5 February - Wisecracks 

Gail Singer, Manitoba/Ontario, 1992, 93 minutes

Singer's feature documentary on female stand-up comics includes portraits of Phyllis Diller, Ellen DeGeneres, Paula Poundstone and Whoopi Goldberg -- and true to its title, Wisecracks is hilarious.

12 February - Double Happiness

Mina Shum, British Columbia, 1994, 100 minutes

Shum's first feature film presents a portrait of a young Chinese woman struggling to reconcile Eastern and Western traditions -- a gentle yet incisive examination of some of the cultural choices that face many Canadians today. 

19 February - Mansfield Park

Patricia Rozema, UK, 1999, 99 minutes

Canadian director Rozema's adaptation of Jane Austen's novel announced her arrival in the international big leagues. Formal, and yet surprisingly pliant and playful, Mansfield Park is the most compulsively watchable of all the Austen adaptations.

26 February - Tu As Crié " Let Me Go"

Anne Clair Poirier, Quebec, 1997, 98 minutes

Poirier's intense and compassionate portrait of her murdered daughter, a talented and fiercely independent young woman who was addicted to heroin. Visually arresting and beautifully crafted, the film is a profound attempt to understand, accept and seek solutions. 

5, 12 and 19 March: No films. 

26 March - The Company of Strangers

Cynthia Scott, Quebec, 1991, 100 minutes

Scott's landmark NFB feature drama follows a clutch of older women who, after their bus breaks down in Eastern Townships, gently discover each other's pasts and presents. Funny, poignant and memorable.

2 April - The Spirit of Annie Mae

Catherine Martin, Nova Scotia, 2002, 73 minutes

Mi'kmaq filmmaker Catherine Martin's latest work reconstructs the story of the legendary Mi'kmaq activist Annie Mae Pictou Aquash (who was mysteriously murdered in the mid-1970s in the aftermath of the Wounded Knee uprisings) through the memories of her family and friends.

9 April - Kissed

Lynn Stopkewich, British Columbia, 1996, 73 minutes 

Actor Molly Parker rose to stardom in Stopkewich's creepy, disturbing, yet poetic meditation on love and death, based on a short story by acclaimed Canadian author Barbara Gowdy.

16 April - My American Cousin

Sandy Wilson, British Columbia, 1985, 95 minutes

In this breezy comedy, a twelve-year old "stuck" in the interior of British Columbia in 1959 gets a visit from her dreamboat male American cousin. The tangle of unexpected cultural differences is still relevant today.