Mon oncle Antoine (1971)

The starting point. Claude Jutra sets it in a small asbestos-mining town on Christmas Eve, seen through a teenage boy who helps out at his uncle's general store, which doubles as the undertaker's. A quarrel with an English-speaking foreman at the mine tells you everything about who held power in old Quebec without a single speech. What makes it last is the tone: funny, sly and sad within the same scene, and never sentimental about rural life. It topped TIFF's polls of the greatest Canadian films in 1984, 1993 and 2004, and it still plays like a coming-of-age story first and a history lesson second.