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Films about an irascible Montreal philanderer, a war-torn family searching for its roots and a genetics experiment gone wrong are among the year's Top 10 Canadian films, as determined by the Toronto International Film Festival.

This year's selections for best homegrown features and shorts include projects from veteran and emerging filmmakers, with festival director Piers Handling calling it "a powerful and impressive list."

It includes Richard J. Lewis' big screen adaptation of Mordecai Richler's bestseller Barney's Version, Denis Villeneuve's wrenching family saga Incendies and Vincenzo Natali's sci-fi horror Splice.

Other picks include Quebec phenom Xavier Dolan's second feature Les Amours imaginaires, ( Heartbeats), Bruce McDonald's rock'n'roll friendship flick Trigger, and Deborah Chow's bilingual drama The High Cost of Living, which was named best first Canadian feature at the Toronto festival.

The Top 10 short film selections include Guy Maddin's The Little White Cloud that Cried and the NFB offerings, I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors and Lipsett Diaries.

The movie list was determined by a panel including actress Liane Balaban, director Matt Bissonnette and Sundance programmer Kim Yutani, while the shorts panel included Chow and filmmaker John Greyson.

The picks were announced Tuesday at a ceremony hosted by actors Peter Keleghan and Leah Pinsent.

Other favourite features include: Curling, directed by Denis Cote; Last Train Home, directed by Lixin Fan; MODRA, directed by Ingrid Veninger; and Trois temps apres la mort d'Anna ( Mourning For Anna), directed by Catherine Martin.

The shorts list also includes: Above the Knee, from Greg Atkins; Les Fleurs de l'Age, by Vincent Biron; The Legend of Beaver Dam, by Jerome Sable; Marius Borodine, by Emanuel Hoss-Desmarais; Mokhtar, by Halima Ouardiri; On the Way to the Sea, from Tao Gu and Vapor, directed by Kaveh Nabatian.

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