In the new documentary Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney – a madcap assemblage of archival footage from the acclaimed Montreal-based director Matthew Rankin (Universal Language), which will premiere Tuesday at the Toronto International Film Festival – Canada’s 18th prime minister is introduced with a telling quote.
Speaking with a reporter back in the eighties, Mr. Mulroney decries the diminished state of Canada’s “entrepreneurial spirit,” going on to insist that the farmers, fishermen and small business owners who risk their lives and capital will “get less of a tax break than somebody who wants to make a third-rate movie that you wouldn’t even show in your basement.”
What, one cannot help but wonder as Mr. Rankin’s delightfully surreal doc unfolds, would the late Mr. Mulroney think about this current moment for Canadian cinema? Especially the films coming out of his home province of Quebec, whose onscreen culture has become one of the thickest red lines that Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government will not cross in trade negotiations with the United States.
A still from the experimental documentary Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney.TIFF/Supplied via THE CANADIAN PRESS
Of course, it is doubtful that Mr. Rankin’s National Film Board production would have seen the light of day if Mr. Mulroney was in charge, given the politician’s affinity for cutting the budgets of the NFB, the CBC and all things culture.
Yet the fact that Mr. Rankin’s movie does indeed exist, and is premiering at TIFF alongside a handful of other buzzy French-language productions, offers a prime opportunity for moviegoers outside of the province to consider the current, sometimes contradictory state of Québécois cinema. It is an industry that thrives inside its own provincial borders, rarely makes a dent outside of them, and has now become crucial to the tremulous, fraught and existential battle for Canadian cultural sovereignty writ large.
“It’s an interesting moment for Québécois cinema, because you have a couple different things happening at the same time,” says Jason Anderson, TIFF’s lead programmer for Canadian films.
“There are more auteurist, personal films that are built for international festivals, but then you have, at the other end, more commercial work, which is still unusual in English-language Canada. Quebec has its own stars, its own dependable directors making films that hit really well at home, but don’t travel outside Quebec. And in the festival, we get that range.”
Canadian director Sophie Deraspe’s documentary The Final Act will premiere at TIFF this year.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press
This diversity includes, on one hand, such smaller, art-house-geared work as Mr. Rankin’s film, plus L’Autre, a highly anticipated psychological thriller from Alexandre Franchi; Rémi St-Michel’s darkly comic crime story Toy Gun Bandit; and a pair of films, Denis Côté’s dystopian drama Nobody’s Violence and Sophie Deraspe’s documentary The Final Act, which both pivot around the topic of assisted suicide. (Curiously, that’s a subject familiar to Quebec moviegoers thanks to the surprise box-office success of Louis Bélanger’s low-budget family drama 125, rue des Malaises, currently in theatres.)
But as TIFF’s Mr. Anderson notes, there is also room for big, glitzy crowd-pleasers. This includes the festival’s closing-night film, Yan Lanouette Turgeon’s Formula One-centric biopic Villeneuve: The Rise of a Legend (whose $15-million-plus budget makes it one of the most expensive Québécois films ever made), as well as Michael Dowse’s Quebec-accented comedy The Stunt Driver, starring Jay Baruchel as the Montreal-born daredevil Ken (The Mad Canadian) Carter, alongside Quebec star Laurence Leboeuf.
This year, there is also TIFF’s inaugural Market, a seven-day event running parallel to the festival that gathers buyers and sellers of film, television and interactive content under the roof of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. When TIFF organizers were first considering launching the Market, chief programming officer Anita Lee met with Louise Lantagne, president and chief executive of Quebec’s cultural funding agency La Société de développement des entreprises culturelles (SODEC), to puzzle out what the initiative could do for the province’s industry.
Quebec director Rémi St-Michel and the cast of his film Toy Gun Bandit at TIFF on Thursday.Carlos Osorio/Reuters
“To give you an example, there will be approximately 200 Quebec delegates coming to the market, which is definitely an uptick from the year before,” Ms. Lee says. “It just shows the kind of pride that there is in championing Quebec cinema.”
Still, this year’s slate of Québécois productions will, like their English-language Canadian counterparts, have a tough time competing for attention at TIFF with the biggest titles coming out of Hollywood.
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“Let’s say that it’s not what it used to be,” says prolific Montreal-based producer Pierre Even (C.R.A.Z.Y., Café de Flore). “Not so long ago, a film playing at TIFF that got good reviews would have an impact on a release following in the coming weeks or months. Nowadays, we have the feeling that TIFF is even more focused on big American films and stars.”
“It’s more and more difficult to attract journalists, buyers and the audience for a French-language film. We consider TIFF as our own; they should treat Canadian films the same way Cannes does with French films. Put them at the forefront of their programming.”
Indeed, a TIFF premiere is nice in theory, but offers no promise of box-office success in return, even within Quebec.
“We’ll see with the Villeneuve movie. On the home front, the festival is well-regarded and a film finding success there will lend it prestige and recognition when it opens,” says Gabriel Pelletier, president of the Quebec director’s guild, L’Association des réalisateurs et réalisatrices du Québec (ARRQ). “Although I wish Quebec films would travel more in Canada. I don’t know if TIFF can help with that.”
And right now, the industry can use all the help it can get.
A still from the Canadian film The Girl Who Cried Pearls.Courtesy of the National Film Board of Canada
Chris Lavis, left, and Maciek Szczerbowski, the duo behind the Oscar-winning animated short film The Girl Who Cried Pearls.Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
While French filmmakers are snapping up awards across the world stage, such as the Montreal team behind the Oscar-winning animated NFB short The Girl Who Cried Pearls, the situation at the box office is a different story.
In 2025, the Quebec box office – historically the strongest-performing market of any province – dropped 15 per cent compared with the year before, which marked a whopping 39-per-cent decline compared with the prepandemic year of 2019. And so far this year, things are even worse, with receipts currently tracking 4.8 per cent below 2025.
Industry players are mixed on the reasons. Some point to the fact that Villeneuve was supposed to be released this past July to buoy the summer market, but production delays forced the title to be punted to the fall. At the same time, such presumed sure-things as François.e, a modern-day trans spin on Tootsie starring comedy icon Louis Morissette, fell flat.
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And then there are more macro concerns to consider, such as the shaky state of independent film worldwide, which has been dented owing to changing audience habits, and the challenge for any movie not boasting an Odyssey-level marketing machine to break through the pop-culture noise.
“I’m convinced that we could do much better very quickly if film financiers like Telefilm and SODEC decide to bring back ‘audience appeal’ as their initial criteria for financing films,” says Patrick Roy, founder of Immina Films, the most successful Quebec-owned distributor for the past two years.
The cast and crew of the film The Stunt Driver on the red carpet at TIFF on Friday.Laura Proctor/The Canadian Press
“We’ve focused so much on discoverability of content, which is also important, that we kind of forgot that we are making films to appeal to audiences. I think we should be ambitious and set a box-office goal like the 5-per-cent market share for Canadian films that Telefilm had for a long time,” Mr. Roy says.
Not that Mr. Roy feels there isn’t room for smaller, more independent-minded films, too. “More successes at the box office also inspire audiences to be more adventurous and curious about artsier movies, so the entire industry benefits from popular success.”
On that rising-tide-lifts-all-boats sentiment, there are more than a few reasons to be optimistic about what’s coming down the pike later this year and into 2027.
Canadian actress and director Charlotte Le Bon.THIBAUD MORITZ/AFP/Getty Images
On the art-house circuit, there are new features from such critically trusted directors as Charlotte Le Bon (Falcon Lake, but perhaps best known for her performance in Season 3 of HBO’s The White Lotus), Philippe Lesage (Who By Fire), Kim Nguyen (Rebelle) and Pascal Plante (whose dark 2023 thriller Red Rooms might have been the most talked-about movie on the American indie circuit that year).
In terms of more commercial fare, there is Villeneuve to look forward to, but also the fall-season release of Rafaël Ouellet’s family-friendly ghost story Hantée, written by the massively popular novelist India Desjardins. Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette has a biopic on the beloved singer-songwriter and activist Pauline Julien, which should resonate both in Quebec and in other francophone markets around the world. And the culture-clash comedy Maudits Français, from box-office lucky charm Émile Gaudreault (Menteur), features the biggest stars from both Quebec (Patrick Huard, Antoine Bertrand) and France (Lambert Wilson, Suzanne Jouannet), and is being distributed in France and internationally by the French powerhouse StudioCanal, and in Canada by Immina Films.
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Meanwhile, the industry has been galvanized over the promises of Quebec’s Bill 109, which requires foreign-owned streamers to promote original French-language content and use French as their default interface language for Quebec subscribers. Similar in intention to the federal Online Streaming Act (Bill C-11), which compels foreign-owned streamers to contribute percentages of their Canadian revenues to the production and promotion of local content but has since been held up in court, both laws have reportedly become sticking points in Canada-U.S. trade talks. Bill 109 was passed into law late last year by Quebec’s National Assembly, though there has been little movement on it since then, largely due to the forthcoming provincial election.
“If everything goes well, it could be effective in 2028,” says ARRQ’s Mr. Pelletier, noting that it could be fought in court by the Motion Picture Association of Canada, as the industry group did with C-11. “Or it becomes the subject of trade negotiations once again. Or both.”
Others see the Bill 109 fight as indicative of larger political winds.
“Regardless of the outcome of the provincial election, I sincerely hope that the elected government will protect our culture,” says Tim Ringuette, founder and president of Entract Films and one of the producers of Villeneuve. “If Prime Minister Carney is standing up to President Trump when it comes to the French language, the Quebec government has every reason to do the same.”
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Jason Anderson, TIFF’s lead programmer for Canadian films, says this is an interesting moment for Québécois cinema.Jeremy Chan/Getty Images
Ultimately, the prevailing sentiment inside the industry is that, no matter the outsized impact that Québécois culture might currently be having on the larger geopolitical climate, the sector cannot continue along its current course without leaders addressing the systemic challenge of financing.
This past March, the Quebec government allocated $280.4-million to the audiovisual sector over five years, including $176.4-million to renew and increase funding for SODEC, Quebec’s cultural funding agency. Yet that bump in funding was not fully in line with the recommendations outlined in a report commissioned by the province’s Culture Minister, Mathieu Lacombe, in the fall of 2025, leaving producers frustrated.
“Not so long ago, we had established that the Quebec industry needed to produce between 22 to 25 films to obtain a critical mass of films released within a year in order to achieve any goals of success. With the postpandemic costs and inflation, we’re now down to 16 to 18 films per year financed with the same body of money,” Montreal producer Mr. Even says.
After all, if the industry cannot sustain itself, it also cannot be used as a bargaining chip in further trade negotiations.
“I am a big fan of our creators, I believe in their talent and judgment. I think that they have to show us the way, and for that they need more freedom,” Mr. Roy says. “So less political interference by our institutions, more rewards for success and more ambition can help us do much better very quickly.”
Quebec at TIFF
L’Autre
Pierre-Yves Cardinal in Alexandre Franchi’s thriller L'Autre.Supplied
Alexandre Franchi’s darkly comic thriller focuses on an aspiring author (Pierre-Yves Cardinal) who, while recovering in a hospital from cancer surgery, begins to lose his grip on reality. Screens Sept. 14, 12:30 p.m.
The Final Act
The Final Act, directed by Sophie Deraspe.Courtesy of TIFF
Sophie Deraspe, whose previous films Antigone and Shepherds both won TIFF’s Best Canadian Feature prize, returns to the world of non-fiction with this documentary chronicling the debate around medically assisted dying. Screens Sept. 15, 3:15 p.m.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney
A still from the experimental documentary Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney.TIFF/Supplied via THE CANADIAN PRESS
This gonzo doc examining the rise to power of Baie-Comeau’s favourite son is a wild trip through the Québécois political scene of the seventies and eighties. Screens Sept. 15, 11:59 p.m., Sept. 17, 6:10 p.m., Sept. 19, 9:45 a.m.
Nobody’s Violence
Montreal-born actress Larissa Corriveau stars in Nobody's Violence, directed by Denis Côté.TIFF/Supplied
Avant-garde director Denis Côté’s latest film stars Larissa Corriveau as an enigmatic young woman who roams a dystopian society, assisting those who want to commit suicide. Screens Sept. 19, 11 a.m.
Toy Gun Bandit
Toy Gun Bandit, from Quebec director Rémi St-Michel.Supplied
Rémi St-Michel’s sophomore directorial feature focuses on the chaos caused by a Quebec City teenager’s prank-gone-wrong, which attracts the attention of a local gangster. Screens Sept. 15, 9 p.m.
The Stunt Driver
Jay Baruchel in The Stunt Driver, directed by Michael Dowse.Philippe Bossé/Mongrel Media/Supplied
Partly funded by SODEC, this dramedy from Michael Dowse follows the larger-than-life exploits of Montreal-born showman Ken (The Mad Canadian) Carter (Jay Baruchel) as he attempts the stunt of his life: driving a rocket-powered car across the St. Lawrence River. TIFF screenings now concluded; opens in theatres across Canada Sept. 25.
The Ultra Runner
Following the brutal 6633 Arctic Ultra, a footrace across more than 600 kilometres of the Canadian North, this doc from Montreal-based director Mila Aung-Thwin promises to be an intense portrait of resilience. Screens Sept. 19, 9:15 a.m.
Villeneuve: The Rise of a Legend
A scene from Villeneuve: The Rise of a Legend.Supplied
Formula One star Gilles Villeneuve gets the splashy biopic treatment. Director Yan Lanouette Turgeon, best known for his work in Quebec television, offers a high-speed look at the racer’s journey from his working-class roots in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu to the Grand Prix podium. Screens Sept. 19, 6 p.m. and 8 p.m., Sept. 20, 12:50 p.m.
Where the River Begins
A co-production between Canada, Colombia and Norway, this intense migration drama is set in the rain forests of Bogota, but is the creation of the acclaimed Colombian-born, Montreal-based director Juan Andrés Arango. Screens Sept. 14, 6:10 p.m., Sept. 16, 6:30 p.m.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to state that the comedy Maudits Français will be distributed in France and internationally by StudioCanal, and in Canada by Immina Films.