Toronto’s Matt Johnson and Kazik Radwanski are often hailed as key figures in the new wave of Canadian cinema but they worry the country’s filmmaking ecosystem isn’t fostering enough young, risk-taking directors.
The star and writer-director of the relationship drama “Matt and Mara” point to a litany of hurdles facing young creatives, from flawed funding models to the absence of a robust film media landscape.
Of the work that is getting made, Johnson wishes more would push creative boundaries, he said in a recent interview ahead of the Toronto International Film Festival.
“I just think Canadian films are treated with kid gloves and I think the critics are too nice to them in Canada,” Johnson said in a video call from Toronto.
“I think that the festival’s too nice to them. I think they program too many Canadian films and the ones that get programmed often are just middling. Very medium. How to fix that? I don’t know. I’m not going to be the guy that says, ‘Let’s play less Canadian films at TIFF.’ Really, what I want is for Canadian filmmakers to just be more daring and do more crazy stuff.”
“Matt and Mara,” which makes its North American debut Wednesday at TIFF, stars Johnson as a novelist who wanders back into the life of his now-married ex, played by Toronto’s Deragh Campbell. As the two reconnect, they begin an emotional affair.
In keeping with Radwanski’s style, the Toronto-shot film had no formal script, with actors improvising the dialogue and figuring out the story organically during the shooting process.
“We wanted to always keep it feeling real or to feel like a conversation people would have,” says Radwanski.
“We’re all friends, so we just wanted to keep shooting it that way. I think that was a real part of the film, maintaining that energy or interest or spontaneity so that we could collaborate to the fullest.”
Radwanski says he was inspired to make the film after witnessing the onscreen chemistry between Johnson and Campbell in his 2019 feature “Anne at 13,000 ft.”
“It’s funny because Matt and I, we like each other but there’s no romantic vibe whatsoever,” laughs Campbell.
“So it’s really funny that I find on the screen it reads as so romantic. It’s very mysterious to me. Maybe it’s something in the spirit of filmmaking, where everyone there is coming from a certain spirit of generosity. Nobody’s trying to get rich or famous.”
Johnson, who directed the critically acclaimed “BlackBerry,” plays an iconoclast who in one scene urges creative writing students to avoid sanitizing their work. He says there are parallels to be drawn with the local film industry, and that he’d like to see Canadian filmmakers push more creative boundaries.
Radwanski and Johnson have each claimed the Toronto Film Critics Award for past work — the former in 2020 for “Anne at 13,000 ft.” and the latter in 2023 for “BlackBerry.”
They suggested that this year’s TIFF lacks a strong presence of young filmmakers from Canada breaking new creative ground.
“I just want to make sure that the younger generation, Gen Z filmmakers, get a real fair shot,” says Radwanski.
“There’s so much discourse about new voices and diversity. I just hope there’s follow through with that and some young filmmakers — people from new perspectives, different parts of Canada — get a fair shot.”
TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey said the festival strives to pick the highest quality films of Canadian submissions.
“I would love to see the Canadian lineup that Matt Johnson would select himself,” he said in an interview before the festival.
“There are about 300 feature films produced in this country every year. Most people don’t get a chance to see a fraction of those. So when we select 25 or 30, it’s already a tough process. We’re saying no to 90 per cent of them, so the 10 per cent that you see are what we think are the very best.”
There are 59 Canadian films in this year’s lineup, with directorial feature debuts including Somali-Canadian rapper K’naan, TV director and producer R.T. Thorne of “The Porter” and actress Kaniehtiio Horn of “Reservation Dogs” and “Letterkenny.”
Still, Johnson says there are too many Canadians with debut features at TIFF this year “who are 38 or in their mid-40s” and not enough in their early 20s.
The outspoken filmmaker had hoped Telefilm’s Talent to Watch program would amplify fresh filmmaking voices across Canada. The initiative, launched in 2018, funds up to 18 projects a year by first-time feature directors, with each receiving a grant of up to $250,000.
In its inaugural year, Johnson was tapped as an ambassador for the program after years of slamming the Canadian film agency in several interviews, criticizing its decisions and processes.
However, he says the money hasn’t been going to the right people.
“What it turned into was a program where it was a backlog of all the people who never got Telefilm funding, who were these people in their 30s and 40s that were all applying for it. And they were like, ‘This isn’t enough money to make a movie,’” he says.
Johnson says the program was meant to support young people at the beginning of their careers: “You’re supposed to be so young that $100,000 is like, ‘I won the lottery.’”
Telefilm said in a release last year that it had selected 18 films for its Talent to Watch Program for 2023-2024, including films told in Spanish, Farsi and Wayuunaiki, as well as English and French.
Telefilm’s senior vice-president of program strategy and industry development says the program isn’t allowed to collect data on age, but that applicants must have made at least one short. Francesca Accinelli says the program is very competitive and “people may be in their late 20s to their 30s” by the time they have the experience needed for their first feature.
She points to successes including Pakistani-Canadian director Zarrar Kahn’s horror film “In Flames,” which premiered at Cannes.
“We’re really proud of this program and we’re proud of the successes that we’ve had pre-Matt Johnson being our ambassador, but also post,” she said.
Radwanski says beyond financing, the filmmaking process can be daunting for young people looking to break into the industry.
“How do you learn how to make a film? How do you find a network of collaborators? You have to be a little bit brazen, and it’s not always easy for everyone to have the privilege of being able to take that type of risk.”
Johnson admits he’s not fully up to speed with the work of today’s young Canadian filmmakers, but the students he’s met have tended to play it safe.
“This generation, people who are in their early 20s right now and in film school, are a little bit anxious. It’s funny, they’ve gone back to a permission model where they’re feeling like they don’t want to do the wrong thing,” he says.
“They want to always be doing things correctly and that is not going to lead to the type of risk-taking behaviour you need to make your first feature. You kind of need to be willing to do a lot of crazy sh-t.”
“This sounds like a monologue from the movie,” Radwanski quips.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
