By Jorge Ignacio Castillo

The 42nd edition of Toronto International Film Festival gave a fresh and diverse crop of Canadian filmmakers a chance to showcase their work. The most notable success story was the winner of Best First Feature Film, Wayne Wapeemukwa’s Luk’ Luk’I. The Best Canadian Feature Award went rather unexpectedly to a genre film, the French-Canadian zombie flick Les Affamés.

Steve Gravestock was directly involved in the selection of these movies. Alongside Magali Simard, Gravestock is the festival’s senior Canadian programmer and has been involved with TIFF for most of his professional life. We talked with Steve about trends in Canadian cinema, best practices for festival hopefuls, and the most interesting Canadian voices out there today.