Canada

The cinema of Canada refers to the filmmaking industry in Canada. Canada is home to several film studios centres, primarily located in its three largest metropolitan centres: Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. Industries and communities tend to be regional and niche in nature. Notable filmmakers from English Canada include David Cronenberg, Guy Maddin, Atom Egoyan, Patricia Rozema, Sarah Polley, Deepa Mehta, Thom Fitzgerald, John Greyson, Clement Virgo, Allan King, and Michael Snow. Notable filmmakers from French Canada include Claude Jutra, Gilles Carle, Denys Arcand, Jean Beaudin, Robert Lepage, Denis Villeneuve, Léa Pool, Xavier Dolan, Philippe Falardeau and Michel Brault.

The cinema of English-speaking Canada is heavily intertwined with the cinema of the neighboring United States: though there is a distinctly Canadian cinematic tradition, there are also Canadian films that have no obvious Canadian identity, Canadian-American co-productions filmed in Canada; American films filmed in Canada; and American films with Canadian directors and/or actors. Canadian directors who are best known for their American-produced films include Norman Jewison, Jason Reitman, Paul Haggis and James Cameron. Canadian actors who achieved success in Hollywood films include Mary Pickford, Norma Shearer, Donald Sutherland, Jim Carrey and Ryan Gosling, among hundreds of others.

The first films that were shot in Canada were made at Niagara Falls; Lumière, Edison, and Biograph all shot there in 1897. James Freer is recognized as the first Canadian filmmaker. A farmer from Manitoba, his documentaries were shown as early as 1897 and were toured across England in an effort to promote immigration to Manitoba. The first fiction film, Hiawatha, the Messiah of the Ojibway, was made in 1903 by Joe Rosenthal and the first Canadian feature film, Evangeline, was produced by the Canadian Bioscope Company in 1913 and shot in Nova Scotia.

In 1938, the Government of Canada invited John Grierson, a British film critic and film-maker, to study the state of the government's film production and this led to the National Film Act of 1939 and the establishment of the National Film Board of Canada, an agency of the Canadian government. Federal government measures as early as 1954, and through the 1960s and 1970s, aimed to foster the development of a feature film industry in Canada; in 1968 the Canadian Film Development Corporation was established (later to become Telefilm Canada) and an effort to stimulate domestic production through tax shelters peaked in the late 1970s.

The National Film Board of Canada is internationally renowned for its animation and documentary production. Much of Canada's film industry services American producers and films driven by American distribution, and this part of the industry has been nicknamed "Hollywood North". The major production centres are Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. In 2011, Toronto ranked third in North America, behind only Los Angeles and New York City, in total industry production.