To get you even more excited about the 51st Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) taking place from September 10 to 20, 2026, we spoke with the producers behind four participating Canadian and Indigenous co-productions.
These filmmakers share thoughts about the coproduction process, creative inspiration, and more behind-the-scenes insight. Read on for the scoop!
Centrepiece
JULÍAN: An Oscar-nominated dream team reunites.
Aircraft Pictures (Canada), Cartoon Saloon (Ireland), Sun Creature (Denmark), Melusine Productions (Luxembourg)
Making its North American debut at TIFF, premiered at the 2026 Annecy International Animation Film Festival. This uplifting animated feature is about a boy’s summer in Brooklyn with his grandmother, where he connects to his Caribbean heritage and the joy of imagination.
The project’s Canadian coproducers, Toronto’s Aircraft Pictures, had previously collaborated with Ireland’s Cartoon Saloon and Luxembourg’s Melusine Productions (also on board for Julián) on another animated feature: 2017’s Academy Award®-nominated The Breadwinner – which counted Angelina Jolie among its executive producers.
JULÍAN was born when Cartoon Saloon optioned Jessica Love’s best-selling book Julián is a Mermaid, on which the film is based. With such a positive experience under their belts, Aircraft Pictures “jumped at the chance” to reunite with this dream team when opportunity knocked, recall producers Andrew Rosen and Anthony Leo, whose recent credits include Geek Girl for Netflix, Circuit Breakers for Apple TV+, and Gangnam Project for CBBC/CBC. The studio has previously earned Emmy Award and Canadian Screen Award nominations.
With four countries in the mix, including Irish director Louise Bagnall, each coproducer’s contribution reflected their specialized expertise. “Independent feature animation requires many hands, many minds, and many sources of financing, so we joined as part of a larger four-country team,” says Rosen about the collaborative process. “A project is more likely to succeed when each coproducer does what they do best, and we’re not going to tell the experts how to animate! For these animation projects, we tend to focus on the voice talent and everything post-production, because that’s what we excel at.”
Since Aircraft Pictures is not primarily an animation studio, they focused on providing “later-stage but vital animation roles,” including ink-and-paint and compositing with Toronto’s Guru Studio; voice talent, music, and post-production. For example, to bring the script’s characters to life with honesty and depth, Rosen and Leo had to look no further than their own city’s rich talent pool. “Toronto is such a vibrant multicultural city, we were able to work with local actors who play all the roles with authenticity that’s true to the story world – in this case, a Caribbean neighbourhood in Brooklyn.”
From a business standpoint, when it comes to seeking international collaborators, Rosen feels word-of-mouth and reputation are secrets to success – especially for animation projects. “Good relationships with previous coproduction partners help us attract new business, and we attend many international animation-specific festivals like Annecy, where foreign producers know Canada is a solid partner for creative producing and financing.”
Finally, as a Toronto-based company, Rosen and his Aircraft Pictures team are “thrilled” to be presenting Julián at TIFF, in their hometown. “It’s a dream to share the experience of watching the film on the big screen with our families and the local cast and crew who worked so hard to make it. We make movies for people to watch and enjoy, and Toronto has the best audiences!”
WHERE THE RIVER BEGINS (DONDE COMIENZA EL RÍO): Finding home, in art and in life
12 PM (Canada), Inercia Películas (Colombia), Midi La Nuit (Canada)
To make his third feature, Colombian-born, Montreal-based filmmaker Juan Andrés Arango journeyed to his homeland, an experience that mirrored the theme of WHERE THE RIVER BEGINS.
Indeed, traveling with his cast and crew throughout the country, from Bogota to the jungle, was a personal and poetic pilgrimage that informed this powerful film, made with passion by everyone involved. As Arango explains, a geographical journey can be a portal inward, a way to “reconnect to the place inside yourself that you call home.”
WHERE THE RIVER BEGINS is about a young Indigenous woman who travels with her daughter to the jungle fleeing violence. Filming throughout Colombia “was very intense,” he explains, noting that Colombian producer Paola Pérez Nieto (Inercia Peliculas) “really helped organize my research trips to the region, coordinating everything, she has a lot of experience in the field there.”
Although complex, the shoot was incredibly rewarding for the team.“We were traveling all around the country, shooting in extreme heat conditions, then going to the jungle. Because we were always taken by the hand by [local] communities, we have been working with these communities for a very long time, which allowed us to go to those territories and work safely in those spaces. We were a team with members from different countries, and that passion and our friendship made it possible to have an amazing experience,” says Arango, whose 2012 debut feature La Playa DC won the Lions Film Award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival after premiering at Cannes, in the Un Certain Regard section.
Arango chose his WHERE THE RIVER BEGINS coproduction partners carefully. “We chose people who really connect with the spirit and energy of the film, all their love and passion are what made the film work. Not just mine, but all the artists working together,” he explains with gratitude. “This definitely proved that people from different cultures and countries can work together and create something together. I think the film really contains part of the sensibilities of everybody that worked on it, and this diversity is what makes it rich and powerful.”
And what is home? For the main character, and perhaps for the filmmaker and the whole production team who embarked on this journey together, home is “a place to stay inside yourself, where you have your roots, that doesn’t change, even though the world keeps changing constantly.”
Special Presentations
CLOSING NIGHT: A star-studded debut born from friendship.
Metafilms (Canada), Fictious (Australia)
With an illustrious cast including Sarah Paulson, Naomi Watts, Dianne Wiest, Toby Wallace and Odessa A’zion, the first feature directed by Australian actor Cody Fern is about a famous actress reconnecting with her estranged family.
CLOSING NIGHT came to life thanks to trust and friendship, explains producer Nancy Grant of Montreal-based Metafilms, which she founded in 2003 with Sylvain Corbeil. “Cody and I have been best friends for years and he stayed with me during pre-production, production, and post-production,” she says. A decade ago, she explains, she produced and financed Fern’s short film Pisces (2017). After he became writing partners with Devon Bostick (Closing Night’s co-writer), they would all go on writing trips together, and Grant would “read and comment on everything they wrote together.”
“Closing Night is our first film together as a trio, and one that was initiated by Cody and that he always wanted to direct.” Friendship also helped secure the project’s Australian collaborators. “When we realized we could do a Canada-Australia copro, Fictious, our Australian co-producer, was an easy choice as its co-founder, Matilda Comers, was friends with Cody,” she says. Certainly, some coproductions can be challenging. “Each country has its own set of specific rules and it comes with a few headaches.” but she’s grateful as making this film was a great experience. “The key is to be patient and love the people you’re working with, and thankfully this was the case with this movie.”
This extended to the Montreal shoot. “Most of Pisces was shot in Dunham, Quebec and Cody always wanted to shoot his first feature in Montreal with a Quebec crew. I think our crews are a national treasure; competent, talented and nice.” Known for collaborating with renowned filmmaker Xavier Dolan (with whom she co-owns Productions Sons of Manual) on many acclaimed films such as Mommy, which took home the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014 and Best Motion Picture at the Canadian Screen Awards the following year, Grant’s awards include the Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA)’s Feature Film Producer’s Award in 2014 (presented at TIFF) and its Indiescreen Established Producer Award in 2023.
With more than two decades of acclaimed and award-winning international hits under her belt, Grant has produced many other festival favourites, such as Maxime Giroux’s Felix and Meira, which scored Best Canadian Feature Film at TIFF in 2014; Monia Chokri’s A Brother’s Love (La femme de mon frère), awarded the Un Certain Regard coup de coeur jury prize at Cannes in 2019, among many others. She was also one of the executive producers on Joachim Trier’s 2025 film Sentimental Value, which won the Cannes Grand Jury Prize!
Grant favours a “hands-on approach,” which is among the reasons she enjoys working with first-time directors. “I have produced many ‘first films’ and I enjoy the more involved role it requires from me,” she says. She also appreciates developing long-term professional relationships. For example, “I have been lucky to be working with mk2 Films [Closing Night’s international sales agent] for quite some time now. As a producer, I like to pick directors and collaborators and stick with them, building long term relationships and trust!” Leading up to TIFF, she’s excited for people to discover the film at its world premiere! “The whole film team is super excited to premiere at TIFF and we cannot wait to watch the film for the first time with a big audience!”
IN ALASKA: Creative synergy sheds light on darker themes
IJswater Films (Netherlands), Experimental Forest (Canada), Uuktumiaq Studios (Canada)
Making its world premiere is this Dutch-Canadian coproduced thriller from Experimental Forest Films, the B.C.-based studio behind 2019’s The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open, which won the Toronto Film Critics Association’s Rogers Best Canadian Film Award, was named a Critic’s Pick by the New York Times, and enjoyed a U.S. theatrical release by Ava Duvernay’s ARRAY.
“This is a story of homecoming,” says Canadian producer Tyler Hagan about In Alaska. “It’s a story of a young man who, through a very weird and intense situation he wasn’t planning for, finds a reason to live – which he didn’t have at the beginning of the film. So it’s a very hopeful story, though it doesn’t shy away from darker elements of the reality of life in the North.”
The film was co-written and co-directed by Dutch filmmaker Jaap van Heusden, who came up with the story a decade ago, and Vinnie Karetak of Nunavut-based Uuktumiaq Studios – who is known for writing the Inuktitut series Qanurli? and acting on The Grizzlies and North of North. Karatek is also a producer on In Alaska. This creative duo initially met at a script workshop, leading to their collaboration.
“There was a lot of support behind the project on both sides of the coproduction, which was wonderful,” Hagan says. While Canada was a minority coproducer, the film was shot entirely in Canada, so Hagan was grateful for collaborative synergy and trust, including from his Dutch producing counterpart Marc Bary and executive producers Rhombus Media in Toronto. “With any intensive creative relationship, you’re in it for the long haul. You do your due diligence but you hope you’re aligned! Fortunately, in this case, a great dynamic between the producers and directors helped us pull this off,”
The teams also saw eye-to-eye regarding honestly portraying the story’s dark themes. “This isn’t something we want to deal with lightly, nor in a sensational way, but we don’t want to sweep it under the rug and pretend these things don’t exist,” he says about elevated suicide rates among Inuit youth and young men in Alaska, Nunavut, and Greenland, which he explains are among the world’s highest, and disproportionately higher than the Canadian average. “This can be clearly linked to factors such as intergenerational trauma, Colonialism, and losing their connection to culture. ‘Do you have a purpose? Do you have a contribution to make to your community?’ When you’re living in a remote community without a lot of options, it can get pretty dark very quickly.”
The project participated in the Cannes L’Atelier Co-Pro Market, International Financing Forum TIFF and Venice Gap-Financing Market during its development. Having “learned so much” making this film, Hagan is excited to share it with TIFF’s audiences. “It’s rewarding to feel the reaction and emotions. You work on projects for so many years, with incredible challenges along the way. It’s amazing to celebrate the film and the great work put into it by hundreds of artists.”
For all you need to know about Canada’s presence at TIFF 2026, please visit Canada at TIFF 2026 – TIFF 2026. See you there!
