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Canadian films are hard to find in the commercial theatres of the nation. Last year, in fact, they accounted for less than 2 per cent of total domestic box-office.

But this doesn't mean there aren't any out there.

Steve Gravestock knows this perhaps better than anyone else. As chief wrangler for Canadian programming at the Toronto International Film Festival, he and his two-member selection committee – CBC Radio critic Jesse Wente and Montreal film writer Matthew Hays – screened 200 feature-length movies and documentaries seeking berths this year from which they culled the 27 productions that are to be screened from tomorrow through Sept. 19.

Given the (unfair) knock on Canadian cinema generally, you might deem Gravestock's job a hardship post. He certainly doesn't. In fact, he's been doing Canadian programming at TIFF since 2004, and helped phase out the Perspective Canada program that previously served as TIFF's primary showcase (critics less charitably characterized it as “a ghetto”) for the country's cinema.

While TIFF continues to run two Canada-specific programs (Canada First!, for new or rising talent, and Short Cuts Canada), Canadian films now are largely scattered, without regard to national distinction, in such omnibus categories as Contemporary World Cinema, Special Presentation, Vanguard and Masters.

Gravestock says he doesn't like to compare one year's entries to the next “but I do think this is a particularly strong year for Canadian film. It was tough to make decisions.” Of course, the movies getting the greatest attention right now are Atom Egoyan's Chloe and Dilip Mehta's Cooking with Stella – a function largely of their having been chosen as the two Canuck entries to get the gala red-carpet treatment (although Quebec director Jean-Marc Vallée is presenting the U.K.-produced The Young Victoria ).

But in talking with Gravestock and others, expectations are high that another six or seven could earn some buzz as the festival unfolds. One aspect of this year's entries – or some of this year's entries – that intrigues Gravestock is “a willingness to toy around more with genre.” Jacob Tierney's The Trotsky, for example, is “a kind of smart teen comedy,” with star Jay Baruchel playing Ferris Bueller to Colm Feore's Mr. Rooney. However, it's not entirely a trip to the land of John Hughes as the Baruchel character actually believes he's the reincarnation of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and acts accordingly.

Similarly, Reginald Harkema's fourth feature, Leslie, My Name Is Evil, “plays off courtroom dramas” – the “Leslie” in this case being Charles Manson follower Leslie van Houten – but stylistically it's resolutely anti-realist, tonally blackly comedic and thematically troubling because the movie's protagonist is a sexually repressed chemist engaged to a devout Christian who, after being selected to the Manson jury, finds himself attracted to van Houten and Manson's ethos of free love. In Peter Stebbings's feature debut, Defendor, Woody Harrelson spends his days holding traffic signs for a construction company, but by night he's a self-conceived superhero, Defendor (with a big “D” made of duct tape affixed to the chest of his costume), searching the streets of Hamilton for his arch-enemy, Captain Industry. Carcasses by Quebec's Denis Côté seems initially to be a documentary about a loner living on a junk-strewn parcel of land near Montreal. But then, in Gravestock's words, it becomes “this kind of fable or fantasy” when a handful of children with Down syndrome show up to squat on the man's land.

Of course, not all 27 features in the '09 Canada program are going to end up scoring lengthy runs in the Cineplexes and AMCs of the nation. Most, in fact, will not. Nevertheless, one can't fault the festival for this. Indeed, once TIFF opens the five theatres in its new Bell Lightbox home next year, it's a safe bet that the festival's commitment to Canadian cinema is going to increase as more Canadian features are mixed into its year-round programming. In the meantime, however, devotees of Canadian film will have to gorge themselves on the nine-day feast that is TIFF to prepare for the famine that will follow.