Vancouver International Film Festival Award for Best Canadian Film

The Vancouver International Film Festival Award for Best Canadian Film is an annual award, presented by the Vancouver International Film Festival to honour the film selected by a jury as the best Canadian film screened at VIFF that year.

The award was presented for the first time in 2003. It was initially open only to films from Western Canada, but was expanded in 2009 to include all Canadian films.

Winners

Year	Film	Director	Ref.
2003	On the Corner	Nathaniel Geary	[1]
2004	Seven Times Lucky	Gary Yates	[2]
2005	Lucid	Sean Garrity	[3]
2006	Everything's Gone Green	Paul Fox	[4]
2007	Normal	Carl Bessai	[5]
2008	Fifty Dead Men Walking	Kari Skogland	[6]
2009	I Killed My Mother (J'ai tué ma mère)	Xavier Dolan	[7]
2010	Incendies	Denis Villeneuve	[8]
	Curling	Denis Côté
2011	Nuit #1	Anne Émond	[9]
	Wetlands (Marécages)	Guy Édoin
2012	Blackbird	Jason Buxton	[10]
	Becoming Redwood	Jesse James Miller
2013	Rhymes for Young Ghouls	Jeff Barnaby	[11]
	That Burning Feeling	Jason James
2014	Violent	Andrew Huculiak	[12]
2015	Sleeping Giant	Andrew Cividino	[13]
2016	Window Horses	Ann Marie Fleming	[14]
2017	Black Cop	Cory Bowles	[15]
2018	Edge of the Knife (SG̲aawaay Ḵ'uuna)	Gwaai Edenshaw, Helen Haig-Brown	[16]
	Genesis (Genèse)	Philippe Lesage
	The Grizzlies	Miranda de Pencier
2019	One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk	Zacharias Kunuk	[17]
	Blood Quantum	Jeff Barnaby	[18]
2020	Beans	Tracey Deer	[19]
2021	Without Havana (Sin la Habana)	Kaveh Nabatian	[20]
2022	Riceboy Sleeps	Anthony Shim	[21]
	Queens of the Qing Dynasty	Ashley McKenzie
2023	Fitting In	Molly McGlynn	[22]
	Gamodi	Felix Kalmenson
2024	Universal Language	Matthew Rankin	[23]

See also

• Toronto International Film Festival Award for Best Canadian Film

References

1. "Kamchatka earns kudos at Vancouver film festival". The Globe and Mail, October 13, 2003.
2. Ian Edwards, "Surging VIFF breaks $1M barrier". Playback, October 25, 2004.
3. Ken Eisner, "VIFF voters back local Horse". The Georgia Straight, October 20, 2005.
4. Alexandra Gill, "VIFF winners". The Globe and Mail, October 14, 2006.
5. Adele Weder, "Vancouver fest wraps, hands out awards". The Hollywood Reporter, October 14, 2007.
6. Fiona Morrow, "Film fest honours the best in the West". The Globe and Mail, October 11, 2008.
7. "Xavier Dolan's debut feature tops Vancouver International Film Festival". The Canadian Press. October 16, 2009.
8. Marsha Lederman, "Villeneuve's Incendies wins Best Canadian Film at VIFF". The Globe and Mail, October 15, 2010.
9. Etan Vlessing, "VIFF 2011: Anne Emond’s Nuit #1 wins top jury prize". Playback, October 17, 2011.
10. Jordan Twiss, "Buxton’s Blackbird wins at VIFF". Playback, October 15, 2012.
11. Danielle Ng See Quan, "It’s a tie: VIFF picks two for Best Canadian First Feature". Playback, October 15, 2013.
12. Adrian Mack (October 6, 2014). "VIFF 2014: Jurors get Violent". The Georgia Straight.
13. Pinto, Jordan (October 5, 2015). "Sleeping Giant, Fractured Land win VIFF prizes". Playback.
14. Pinto, Jordan (October 11, 2016). "VIFF names BC Spotlight winners". Playback.
15. Jordan Pinto, "Cory Bowles’ Black Cop wins VIFF’s best Canadian feature prize". Playback, October 10, 2017.
16. Adrian Mack (October 6, 2018). "Haida-language feature Edge of the Knife wins VIFF's top B.C. Spotlight awards". The Georgia Straight.
17. Derek Neary, "Kunuk’s latest effort earns ‘Best Canadian Film’ in Vancouver". Northern News Services, October 6, 2019.
18. Kelly Townsend, "‘The Body Remembers’ wins two awards in VIFF’s BC Spotlight". Playback, October 9, 2019.
19. Craig Takeuchi, "VIFF 2020: Beans, Violation, and The Hidden Life of Trees among award winners". The Georgia Straight, October 2, 2020.
20. Steve Newton, "Vancouver International Film Fest announces award winners". The Georgia Straight, October 13, 2021.
21. Noel Ransome, "‘Riceboy Sleeps’ and ‘Until Branches Bend’ win top film prizes at VIFF". Toronto Star, October 7, 2022.
22. V.S. Wells, "VIFF announces Canadian film award winners". The Georgia Straight, October 5, 2023.
23. Gail Johnson, "Vancouver International Film Festival announces winners of 2024 juried awards". Stir, October 3, 2024.