TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL Day 2 Getting desperate

Representation of Canadian movies strongest in recent years We’re world class at showing stress, both mental and physical

Ask any Canadian, or astute outsider, to describe our national traits and the answers would invariably be the same. We Canucks are solid, trustworthy, cheerful ( except in winter) and diligent. We vote Liberal, but we aren’t necessarily liberal-minded. We think Canadian films are worthy, but we rarely go to see them. We are only slightly dull and just a little smug, especially when talking about Americans.

Until now, there’s been one word that couldn’t have been used to describe us: desperate.

“Desperate” has always been for other people in other places, where the life is less comfortable and where passions run deeper. But that’s changing, judging by the Canadian films now screening at the 30th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival.

Desperation in all its myriad forms — mental and physical, worldly and spiritual, actual and imagined — is on display in a collection of Canuck offerings by both established and rookie directors that is the

Caroline Cave plays a woman in a coma in Calgarian David Christensen’s Six Figures, which follows one man’s descent from happiness to desperation as finances and crime combine against him.