Why Canadian movies are having a moment
4/17/202623 min
Earlier this year, a report on domestic box office data for 2025 revealed that Canadian films brought in $13.9 million last year. Compared to $23.5-million in 2024, the report painted a distressing picture. But in the last three months, five homegrown films have been breaking box office records. After a sluggish year, Canadian movies are finally having a moment.
Barry Hertz is the Globe’s deputy arts editor and film editor. He joins us today to talk about what filmmakers and distributors are doing to capitalize on a time when Canadians – and even Americans – have more of an appetite for Canadian film, and how this moment could serve as the genesis of a Canadian cinematic renaissance.
Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at thedecibel@globeandmail.com
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsCheryl Sutherland· Host0:00
[chime] Back in February, Canadian box office data from 2025 came out, and it wasn't pretty.
Barry Hertz· Guest0:09
[upbeat music] Well, in, in 2025, it was actually a very, uh, distressing story. Um, according to a report issued by Telefilm earlier this year, homegrown films, meaning movies that were made here, and more importantly were financed here, brought in around $13.9 million at the domestic box office. That's down by about 40% from 2024, the year before, where it was 23.5 million. So that's... it's quite a sharp decline.
Cheryl Sutherland· Host0:45
That's Barry Hertz. He's the deputy arts editor for The Globe and the film editor.
Barry Hertz· Guest0:51
But the good news is that while we were worrying about what was happening last year, things have been changing during the first three months of 2026. We've seen, uh, five homegrown Canadian films cross the $300,000 mark at the Canadian box office. Now, that might not sound like much, but talking with people in the industry and having a larger picture view of things, many people cannot quite recall the last time so many Canadian films overperformed in such a short amount of time.
Cheryl Sutherland· Host1:28
Today,